European Drone Fly

Here's another fly that looks like a bee and another invasive species, a European Drone Fly. The best clue that this isn't a bee (or wasp or flying ant) is that it only has 1 pair of wings (though admittedly some bees/wasps are small enough that it's hard to get a good look at their wings).

Like other syrphid flies, these flies are helpful to plants as pollinators; they have no interest in biting you.

They probably fit into our ecosystem pretty well partly because they've basically supplanted a similar native fly, the Hourglass Drone Fly. The Hourglass Drone Fly used to be one of our most common syrphid flies, and would probably get confused with the European Drone Fly except that the Europeans have out-competed [1] the Hourglasses throughout North America except for some areas around Hudson Bay.

June 11, 2022 at Duke Farms
Photo 209944365, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

[1] It's possible that the European Drone Fly and Hourglass Drone Fly interbred, and we've really got hybrids that just look more like the European Drone Fly. Perhaps some Hourglass Drone Fly genes are still around in what looks like purebred European Drone Flies.


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