Is it a Bee, Fly, or Wasp?featured

There are a LOT of flying insects out there and they are not always easy to identify.  Here’s a guide to help.

____Holm, “Bees: An Identification and Native Plant Foraging Guide”, p16, 2017.

Overall Shape: Bees and flies have a compact form compared to wasps which have a long, linear form.

Hairy/Not Hairy: Bees are usually hairy and often have hairs on the head and thorax.  Some flies, such as bee flies and syrphid flies, can be hairy but many other flower-visiting flies are not.  Most wasps are relatively hairless.

Antennae: Bees and wasps have longer antennae then flies; most flies have very short antennae.  If the antennae of bees or wasps were folded backward, they would reach beyond the head.  In contrast, the antennae of a fly would not reach past the head if folded backward.

Wings: Bees and wasps have two pairs of wings.  During flower visits, the wings of bees appear broader than those of wasps and are usually folded over or parallel to the abdomen.  Flies have one pair of wings and two halteres (small drumstick-shaped appendages) that protrude outward from under the wings.  Halteres are used during flight to provide a fly with balance.

Waist: Bees are usually robustly shaped with three defined sections: the head, the thorax and abdomen.  Flies lack a waist (a definition between the thorax and abdomen); mosts wasps have a narrow form and a well-defined waist, very narrow in the case of thread-waisted wasps.

Eyes: Bees and wasps have a pair of compound eyes, one on each side of the head and ocelli (three simple eyes) on the top of their heads.  Flies also have the ocelli, but their large compound eyes often encompass their whole head, even touching at the top of the head in many species.

____Holm, “Bees: An Identification and Native Plant Foraging Guide”, p16, 2017.