Invite These Tremendous-Pollinators & Pest Managers to Your Backyard

By Silvia Strobl, Grasp Gardener

Chances are you’ll know that native bees are an important of our native pollinators, however which bugs are the second most essential pollinators of meals crops and native wildflowers?

Maybe you’ve by no means heard of flower flies? Visiting flowers extra typically and transferring extra pollen than pollinators resembling butterflies, flower flies vary in measurement from lower than 1/4 inch lengthy to greater than 3/4 inch lengthy, however pollinate at the least 72% of worldwide meals crops and about 70% of wildflowers (Pollinator Partnership, 2024).

Possibly you may have mistaken their strongly contrasting black and yellow bands on the stomach for a bee or a wasp? Their colouring mimics that of those stinging bugs—an evolutionary improvement often called Batesian mimicry. The English naturalist, Henry Walter Bates, got here up with this time period for innocent species that tackle the bodily traits of harmful or bad-tasting species. So though hover flies lack a stinger, their colouring imitates the warning colors of bees and wasps that do have stingers, thereby providing safety by deceiving predators.

The larvae of flower flies are stellar pest managers, consuming aphids, leafhoppers, mealy bugs and thrips. In truth, one larva can eat as much as 400 aphids over its two to 3 week improvement!

Females lay a whole bunch of eggs, depositing every tiny white egg singly on leaves or shoots close to colonies of aphids. The larvae hatch in two to 3 days and resemble small legless maggots,  ranging in color from creamy-white to inexperienced or brown (Mahr 2025).

4 widespread flower flies that I’ve noticed and photographed in my backyard, and whose identification has been verified by specialists on iNaturalist, are proven and described within the following. Lists of flowers visited are from Skevington et al 2019).

There are 416 identified flower fly species in japanese North America (Skevington et al. 2019). So I hope to look at and {photograph} at the least a number of extra species on flowers in my backyard this season! Almost all flower flies can readily be recognized by their:

• Massive heads with massive forward-facing eyes that always fuse collectively. Bees have kidney-shaped eyes on the aspect of their heads.
• Stubby, quick antennae versus the lengthy antennae that bees have
• Solely 2 wings in comparison with 4 wings for bees and wasps (Erikson 2020)
• A “false” vein of their wing venation i.e., a vein that isn’t joined to any others

From: https://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/S/I-DP-SYRP-KC.003.html#gsc.tab=0

How do you entice these tremendous pollinators and pest managers to your backyard?

1. Flower flies choose white and yellow flowers which might be open and have simply accessible pollen and nectar, for instance the disc flowers within the daisy (or Asteraceae household), however in addition they use orange, pink, purple, and blue daisy-like flowers. In line with a just lately revealed ebook concerning the flower flies of northeastern North America, native vegetation are important to supporting a variety of flower flies (Skevington et al. 2019). Non-native vegetation that entice flower flies embody: Queen Anne’s lace, wild mustard, candy alyssum, coriander, dill, broccoli, kale, lettuce, mustards, dandelion, plums and cherries (Mahr, 2025, Pollinator Partnership 2024).
2. Don’t use pesticides since they’ll kill each the larvae and the grownup flower flies.
3. To offer the larvae one thing to eat, tolerate some stage of aphids and different pests in your backyard.

Don’t be shocked if by doing these belongings you all of a sudden begin seeing flower flies in your backyard. Also called hover flies, chances are you’ll even observe their darting forwards and backwards flying behaviour i.e., when males hover within the open hoping to draw a feminine, or when males of some species defend a territory.

Flower flies are among the most useful bugs you’ll be able to have within the backyard so invite them in by planting the annual non-native and native flowers they like.

Literature Cited