Facing down the bee mimic

On these beautiful sunny days, I never get tired of watching the bees. It’s so soothing to watch them forage on the asters, the butterfly bush, the goldenrod. Bumblebees, honeybees, Carpenter bees, flying up and down the hill over and over again. But one of these bees is an imposter.

I’m running out of cute ways to refer to bee flies

Along with the butterflies and the bees and the birds, there’s a syrphid fly I’ve been chasing. A bee mimic, to be precise. Mostly likely Eristalis tenax, to be even more precise. It’s the kind of fly that looks just like a bee but it doesn’t exactly act like a bee. Bees methodically go from […]

Beer and … Bees?

We had beautiful warm weather for NERAX North, so nice the honeybees were buzzing around these chrysanthemums growing in planters behind the Tap. But two of them weren’t bees.

The crowd on the bee and butterfly bush

The butterfly bush is surrounded by the darting shadows of bees against the all-too-clear blue sky. Amid the heat wave, this and the coneflowers are the main source of nectar around here. The powdery lavender scent is drawing an amazing variety of bees and such. Last year, the butterfly bush was the domain of the […]

Bumblebee mimic

There’s so many bumblebees around but they move so quick, I’m often complaining about not getting a good picture of them. Then I saw this one, just sitting around on some flopped-over daffodil leaves. Cool! I thought. I hope it doesn’t fly away when I get close. And it just sat there. Very not like […]