Will the real honey bee stand up?

Not all bees are honey bees and not all floral visitors that look like bees are bees. Sometimes they're flies.

A recent trip to the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, a half-acre bee friendly garden located next to the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility on Bee Biology Road at the University of California, Davis yielded a variety of floral visitors.

They all took a'liking to the 8-foot-tall Mexican sunflower (Tithonia rotundifolia), as orange as a Halloween pumpkin.

The floral visitors?

One was a drone fly (Ristalis tenax).

One was a sunflower bee (Svastra obliqua expurgata).

And one was a honey bee (Apis mellifera).

Scores of editors have mistaken drone flies and sunflower bees for honey bees and published photos that make entomologists cringe.

Entomologist/insect photographer Alex Wild of the University of Illinois (he received his doctorate in entomology at UC Davis with major professor Phil Ward), wrote an eye-opening piece on his Scientific American blog about mistaken insect identities. You'll want to read this--and then take a look at his amazing Myrmecos site.

And if you want to learn about insect photography from a master, be sure to attend his seminar from 12:10 to 1 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 26 in 122 Briggs Hall, UC Davis. His topic: "How to Take Better Insect Photographs."

And maybe he'll mention that Bees of the World book cover. The image is a fly.

"If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck, it's probably a duck," or so the saying goes.

But if it looks like a honey bee, moves around on blossoms like a honey bee, and feeds on nectar and pollen like a honey bee, it may not be a honey bee.

It could be a flower fly or syrphid in the Syrphidae family.

The syrphids suffer from multiple cases of mistaken identity.

One of the syprhids commonly mistaken for a honey bee (Apis mellifera) is the drone fly (Eristalis tenax).

An imposter!

We spotted a drone fly--the first we've seen this year--on Feb. 5 in Tomales, Marin County.   It was nectaring a pincushion flower (Seabiosa columbaria) at the Mostly Natives Nursery.

"There's a bee!" someone exclaimed.

It wasn't. It was a drone fly. 

In its larval stage, it's known as a rat-tailed maggot. You'll see it in stagnant water, such as in ditches, ponds and drains. It feeds on stagnant rotting organic material.

In its adult stage, it moves from flower to flower, sipping nectar and pollinating flowers. Watch it hover and you know it's not a honey bee.  Look at its two wings, and you know it's not a honey bee (the honey bee has four).

Lots of other differences, too.

It's a good pollinator, but a honey bee, it is not.

Yarrow, yarrow, yarrow.

Drone fly, drone fly, drone fly.

This little insect is often mistaken for a honey bee.  In the adult stage, both the drone fly and honey bee nectar flowers. However, the drone fly is a syrphid fly (family Syrphidae, subfamily Eristalinae, tribe Eristalini, genus, Eristalis). Like all syrphids, it has two wings. The honey bee has four.

Other distinct differences tell you it's a fly, not a bee. It's amazing, though, how often stock photos proclaim "honey bee" when the insect is actually a drone fly.

In its larval stage, the drone fly is known as a rat-tailed maggot. You'll see it in stagnant water, such as in ditches, ponds and drains. It feeds on stagnant rotting organic material.

We spotted this drone fly sipping nectar on a brilliant yellow yarrow (Achillea millefolium). If you look closely, you'll see yellow pollen clinging to its abdomen.

Flies, too, are pollinators!

Remember the 1998 U.S. vice presidential debate when Sen. Lloyd Bentsen told Sen Dan Quayle: "I knew Jack Kennedy, and you're no Jack Kennedy!"

Well, in the insect world, there's a fly that looks a lot like a honey bee, but it's no honey bee.

It's a drone fly (Eristallis tenax) from the family Syrphidae. It resembles a drone (male) honey bee.

UC Davis entomologist and emeritus professor Robbin Thorp of the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, who does research on native pollinators, identified the drone fly below as a female.

The drone fly is brownish black with light yellow triangles at the base of the abdomen.

"It's sometimes called the 'H fly' for the pattern on the front of the abdomen," Thorp said.

So, what's the resemblance between a drone fly and a drone honey bees? The eyes. And the similar bullet-shaped bodies. "The eyes look quite a bit alike," agreed UC Davis apiculturist Eric Mussen.

However, the honey bee has four wings, and the drone fly, two. "But sometimes," Mussen said, "you don't notice the drone honey bee's other pair of wings."

There's no mistaking the larvae, though. They drone fly larvae are aquatic. They live in drainage ditches, sewage, and stagnant ponds or sluggish streams. Each little sausage-shaped larva has a long breathing tube which it extends to the surface for oxygen. It's known as a "rat-tailed maggot."

Did anybody say "Yecch?" Yecch!

Sometimes you'll see the rat-tailed maggots moving around in fresh cattle dung or, shall we say, moist excrement.

Did anybody say "Yecch?" Yecch!

When it's an adult, it visits flowers, like this drone fly did in the Storer Gardens during the recent UC Davis Arboretum Plant Faire.

I'm glad it wasn't a rat-tailed maggot.

But it used to be.