This may look like a tiny wasp or bee, but it is actually a beneficial insect – the Flower Fly. Flower Flies help keep gardens free of damaging insects, like aphids. The flies live off nectar from flowers, and can often be found hovering above said flowers like bees. Unlike bees and wasps they they neither bite nor sting. Because of their habit of hovering over the flowers they are drinking nectar from, they are also commonly known as Hover flies. They can be found anywhere in North America where flowers are in bloom.
Fertilized females lay eggs that hatch into larva that look like small green worms. The predatory little larva that hatch have a voracious appetite for plant pests and can clear a plant of aphids or other small soft bodied pests (like very small caterpillars) in a short time.
I was very lucky to catch a shot of this guy hovering above this small yellow flower in the early morning hours Sadly I was only able to manage this one photo above before it stopped hovering and zipped away to parts unknown. I was thrilled to see that the photo was (more or less) in focus since I was shooting macro close up and hand holding the camera at 1/80 of a second exposure time. (Shooting freehand, at that slow a shutter speed, with the small depth of field my macros lens gives me for a shot this close usually doesn’t work out in my old, shaky hands.)
I don’t have a picture of the larva, but was able to find an excellent one on Flickr. Click on the picture below to jump over there and show fyberduck some love.
