My mom planted a patch of poppies in her garden this year, and overnight we had a ton of them open. The bees were going bonkers on them this morning. I counted 4 species of bees and 5 species of hover flies. You could hear the bumbles buzz pollinating too! They sounded almost like piping queens.
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The most interesting hover fly was this one though. When it flew in I thought, "Why does that bumble bee sound so weird?" But it wasn't a bumble bee, it was a king of Batesian mimicry! Look at how closely this fly resembles our Eastern bumble bees and carpenter bees! It even has a little spot on its back and hair on its legs that look like pollen baskets. But bees don't sit around on flowers and wash their hands! :wink: I'm pretty sure the species is Mallota posticata.
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When I was researching them, I found out that they lay their eggs in standing water in holes in trees, and their larvae have little tubes that they stick above the water to breathe like a scuba diver!
Also, this wasn't on the poppies, but since I had the camera out I took a picture of one of my straw cans that I have up for native bees to nest in. The masons don't seem to like this can, but there is a little potter wasp who has taken up residence. You can just see her face back in the straw I have circled. She sits with her head out a lot of the time, but every time I held the camera up she would scoot back.
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