During the summer my place is literally buzzing with various bees, wasps, and flies. There are several patches of wildflowers in the front yard, and the whole back half of the property has been left wild. We also back up on a state forest property, so there are plenty food sources for these nectar loving insects. A fun thing that I like to do is to get out in a patch of wildflowers and set up the camera. You never know what might come along!

One summer afternoon I was out in one of the flower patches in the front yard, when I noticed a funny looking insect buzzing around from flower to flower. It had large eyes like a fly, but had long legs like a mosquito. It was kind of fuzzy looking like a bee, but had only two, fly-like wings, not the four that bees have. It’s behavior was unusual, too. Most of the time it would hover just over the flower rather than actually landing like most bees and wasps do. To feed, it would push out a long tube-like extension (called a proboscis) into the flower to get at the nectar. I had definitely never seen anything like that on any bee or wasp! It was fascinating to watch, and I almost forgot to get any photos!

That evening, I put one of my photos into the Picture Insect app, and found out that this little guy was a dotted bee fly. They are flies and don’t sting or bite but like bees the adults feed on nectar. They tend to hover rather than land to avoid predators that may hide in the flowers. Even though they hover, they do get pollen on them, so they are helpful in the pollination process. All in all, a pretty cool, well adapted little insect!