A few weeks ago I went to one of our local retention ponds to release a turtle that I had found. The area around the retention pond was just teeming with all sorts of life. There was a wealth of wildflowers, butterflies, bees, and these bee flies (Villa spp). You can probably see why they are called bee flies. They look very similar to honeybees or bumblebees, but they have much larger eyes, very short antennas, and only one pair of wings. Even though they look like bees, they are actually members of the fly family (Bombyliidae). Like bees, they feed on nectar using a long proboscis that some people mistake for a stinger. Most of the time they hover above the flower and don’t land, thus avoiding predators like crab spiders and lynx spiders.

There were quite a few of these bee flies buzzing around the various types of flowers, but they kept actually landing on the turkey tangle flowers rather than hovering. It definitely made it easier to get some good images, but it did make me curious as to why their behavior was different for this one type of flower. I suspect it was because the flowers of the turkey tangle are very small. Their size may make it hard to feed on them by hovering. The flowers are also much too small to hide a predatory spider large enough to capture a bee fly. There were no other really small flowers out there, so I couldn’t check out my theory, but it has piqued my curiosity. I’m going to keep my eyes open next time I see bee flies, and try to assess how they feed on other types of very small flowers.