northeast-flora-and-fauna

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 interb...