The world is full of flowers and shadows. As flower pickers, bees have their irreplaceable role, but do we see that all the honey collected on the flowers must be bees?
Nonono, let me take you to learn it!
1. Speaking of physical characteristics, let's first look at the following picture
Is it a bee or an aphid-eating fly?
Bingo, do they look particularly alike, have they confused you? In fact, ah, the back is the bee, the front is called aphid fly, the naked eye looks like they are still a bit like a parent-child relationship, you will say not a fat point a thin point. Next, let's take a look at the differences between them:
Aphid-eating flies, adults small to large, wide or slender, single dark body color or often with yellow, orange, gray and other bright colors of the stripe, the head is large, male eyes are synophytic, female eyes are detached, and both sexes are born. The eggs of the aphid fly are generally white and long in the aphid colony, and the egg shell has a mesh pattern.
There are many types of bees, we common bees, as shown in the figure above, we may feel that honey is very delicious, beekeepers also pay attention to the value of honey, in fact, the actual value of bees as pollinators is greater than the value of their production of honey and beeswax. The body of the bee is 8-20 mm long, yellow-brown or black-brown, with dense hairs; the head and chest are almost the same width; the antennae are knee-shaped, the compound eyes are oval, the mouthparts are chewing and sucking, and the hind feet are powder-carrying feet; two pairs of membranous wings, the forewings are large, the hindwings are small, and the front and back wings are hooked; the abdomen is nearly oval, the body hair is less than the chest, and there are claw needles at the end of the abdomen. Bees go through four worm states throughout their lives: eggs, larvae, pupae and adult worms. There are about 15,000 known species of bees in the world and about 1,000 species in China.
Although the two of them are counted as the same insect class, they are indeed different families and different orders. Aphid-eating flies are diptera in the family Aphid-eating flies, and bees are hymenoptera in the bee family.
2. In terms of living habits, bees lay eggs in the nest room, larvae live in the nest room, the larvae of the camp social life are fed by the worker bees, and the larvae of the camp solitary life eat the bee food stored in the nest room by the female bees, and when the bee food is eaten, the larva matures and pupates, and breaks out of the cocoon when feathering. Domestic bees breed several generations a year, and generally males appear earlier than females, have a short lifespan, and do not undertake the tasks of nesting, storing bee food and raising offspring. Female bees nest, collect pollen and nectar, and store them in the nest chamber, and live longer than males. Bees feed on plant pollen and nectar.
Adult aphid-eating flies appear in early spring, bloom in spring and summer, like sunshine, often fly between flowers on grass or aromatic plants, eat pollen, nectar, and spread pollen, sometimes or suck sap. Adults have strong flight power, often soaring in the air, or vibrating wings to stay still in the air, or suddenly flying in a straight line at high speed and then hovering. Aphid-eating flies themselves have no stinging or biting ability, but often have various mimetics, often imitating wasps or bees in body size and color, and can imitate bees as stinging. For example, the genus of large, hairy, and yellow-black markings imitate bumblebees, and some species of the subfamily of ant nest aphids imitate bees. Therefore, if you are stung by a bee, the bee will overshoot, and the aphid fly will not. Adult aphid-eating flies must eat pollen to develop and reproduce after feathering, otherwise the ovaries cannot develop, and the larvae can immediately prey on the surrounding aphids after hatching.
3. So how do we identify them?
Is this a bee?
Is this an aphid-eating fly?
Aphid-eating flies have only a pair of wings, some of the hindwings degenerate into balance sticks, and the flies look a little similar, no stingers, short antennae, generally mango-shaped, the eyes almost account for most of the head, the head is directly connected to the body, and the bees have two pairs of wings, there are stinging stings, tentacles knee-like, long and curved, hind feet are thicker, some even have pollen clumps, the eyes are relatively small, the head is relatively small, and the head and the body are connected with a thinner "neck".
How, can you tell them apart, it's not necessarily the bees that surround you, it's probably the aphids that eat flies.
Don't be afraid to see bees in the future, if you don't disturb them, they won't sting you, because if it stings you, you will "die soon"!