One afternoon after work I heard quite a bit of buzzing coming from nearby. Being me, I had to go investigate with camera in hand. It turned out to be a small bunch of grasshopper bee flies (Systosechus vulgaris) buzzing around a clump of flowers. As you can see from the images, the flowers had seen better days, but there must have been plenty of nectar left in them for these small insects since all of them seemed excited by the find.

Grasshopper bee flies are also often called common bee flies or just bee flies. They are flies in the family Bombyliidae, which also includes humbleflies and is made up of over 4500 species. Because of their long proboscises and fuzzy, yellow bodies, buzzing sound, and love for flower nectar, many people mistake them for small bees, which is how they came to be known as bee flies. Unlike bees, though, bee flies cannot sting or bite. The long proboscis is used only for probing and feeding from flowers. Most of the time bee flies hover over the flowers that they are feeding from, thus avoiding predators that can hide in the petals. This makes getting photos of them somewhat challenging, but I’m always willing to try.

If the nectar is especially good or abundant bee flies will sometimes land on the flower. The one above was really into that particular flower and had not only landed (making a great photo op), but had most of its long proboscis buried deep in the flower. When it finished and launched itself off the flower, I was lucky enough to capture it in flight, which is the first image above. I think these little guys are adorable and I try to get pictures whenever I find them, even though most of them don’t turn out. I was pretty pleased with the results from this day, and it makes me happy to share a bit about the cute little bee fly.