A Hoverfly

A Hoverfly

July 11, 2004

Update 8 September 2010: A friendly web person wrote and told me that what I had been calling a tiny bee is actually a hoverfly (of the genus Toxomerus). Hoverflies may not produce honey, but apparently they're among the more useful flies: Hoverfly larvae consume aphids and adults pollinate plants. I have to do more updating on this page, so this notice is a temporary fix for now.

Being interested in photographing most everything I can photograph, I put a closeup filter on my Sony F707 to take a photo of some flowering grass. The seed portion itself is small enough, being perhaps a generous eighth of an inch in diameter (or about 3 mm). Then I noticed the smallest bee working the minuscule petals. I kept taking photos until a few came out clear enough to see the tiny bee.

The first photo shows the overall head of the grass seed (which was on top of a stalk all of 6 or 8 inches above the ground.)

Apart from the bee itself being so small, I've never noticed a white-bottomed bee before (which probably means that there are only a million different species of white-bottomed bees).

The second photo is of the tiny bee itself.

One could paraphrase that there's a man for every woman (or vice versa) to become there's a bee for every flower (or vice versa), which doubtlessly is closer to the truth.

Photo note: The photos were taken during July 2004 with a Sony F707 and a closeup filter.

A closer hoverfly (2015) | Green bee (2014)
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