{"id":10313,"date":"2014-04-21T20:46:50","date_gmt":"2014-04-22T03:46:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=10313"},"modified":"2014-05-03T15:37:48","modified_gmt":"2014-05-03T22:37:48","slug":"bombylius-major","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=10313","title":{"rendered":"Bombylius major"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>This is the season for viewing a <em>Bombylius<\/em> fly. Last year&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=7472\">posting<\/a> about this bee-mimic fly\u00a0was also made mid-April.\u00a0This year&#8217;s images are strikingly\u00a0similar, same species, same dried grass, same flowers. The difference is that I now know a little bit more about this flying ball of fuzz.<\/p>\n<p>This year, I am fairly confident that the fly\u00a0shown here is a <em>Bombylius major<\/em>, a species found throughout North America and Eurasia. That it mimics bees is, of course, a tactic to avoid being eaten by birds (and wasps?) as it goes about sipping nectar from flowers.<\/p>\n<p>It only appears in the spring because that is the time solitary bees temporarily leave their nest sites unprotected. Unlike the social bees, each solitary bee lays her own eggs and does so in\u00a0a small tunnel she has provisioned with food such as nectar and pollen. She then seals the entrance. However, for the\u00a0short time it takes to do this, the tunnel entrance is open and that is when the\u00a0<em>Bombylius<\/em>\u00a0fly comes by and deposits its own eggs inside. The <em>Bombylius<\/em> larva<span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u00a0emerges, feeds on the provisions meant for the bee larvae; it then changes form and eats the bee larva, itself. <em>Bombylius<\/em> has only a short time in the spring to give its offspring this opportunity.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>This <em>Bombylius major<\/em> may be warming itself in the sunlight. The\u00a0picture shows the\u00a0fly&#8217;s particularly long proboscis and legs. The usefulness of these\u00a0will be seen in the last picture.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10316\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/bombylius140420as.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The adult fly lives off nectar.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10315\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/bombylius140420bs.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Often this\u00a0fly does not land on the flower, but hovers adjacent to\u00a0it\u00a0(here, its wings are blurred by hovering). Its long proboscis enables it to sip nectar and it merely stabilizes itself with its long legs. Not actually landing on the flower\u00a0is probably\u00a0a defensive tactic against crab spiders that pounce on flies that do land.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10314\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/bombylius140420cs.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; This is the season for viewing a Bombylius fly. Last year&#8217;s posting about this bee-mimic fly\u00a0was also made mid-April.\u00a0This year&#8217;s images are strikingly\u00a0similar, same species, same dried grass, same flowers. The difference is that I now know a little &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=10313\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bugs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10313"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10454,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10313\/revisions\/10454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}