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Sticker of Bare-eyed bee-mimic fly
Bug card No. 0294 of 4,939

Bare-eyed bee-mimic fly

Mallota bautias
Eats: Nectar and pollenFlies and mosquitoesGardens and meadows6 legs

The bare-eyed bee-mimic fly is a hoverfly from eastern North America. It looks so much like a bee that most people would be fooled. But it is a fly, and it has no sting at all.

Lives in
Eastern North America, around flowers
Top speed
about 14 km/h (8.7 mph)
Flying, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It only pretends to be a bee and cannot sting.
What does it eat?
Like other hoverflies, the grown-ups visit flowers to drink nectar and eat pollen.
For real!Photo of Bare-eyed bee-mimic fly
Picture by Beatriz Moisset. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

Looking like a bee helps protect it, because birds and other animals do not want to risk a sting.

2

Hoverflies like it can hang still in the air, like a tiny helicopter.

3

You can tell a fly from a bee by its wings: a fly has two wings, a bee has four.

you asked

Most asked questions about Bare-eyed bee-mimic fly

?Can the bare-eyed bee-mimic fly sting?

No. It is a fly that only looks like a bee, and flies have no sting.

?Is the bare-eyed bee-mimic fly a bee?

No. It is a hoverfly that looks very much like a bee.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Mallota bautias
Group
Flies and mosquitoes
Family
Syrphidae
Classification
Insecta > Diptera > Syrphidae
Lives on
North America

Where the facts come from

  1. Mallota bautias (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by Beatriz Moisset. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.

If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.

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