I'm called to the end of the garden by the 10-year-old. "Daddy, is that a hornet?" she asks, pointing to a big brown insect sitting on a leaf near the swing.
I'm called to the end of the garden by the 10-year-old. "Daddy, is that a hornet?" she asks, pointing to a big brown insect sitting on a leaf near the swing. What a wonderful thing if it is, I think. But no, it's not a hornet, it's a hornet-mimicking hoverfly.
This has got to be one of my favourite insects. Despite its size (one of Britain's largest flies), it has no common name, apart from the rather inadequate 'belted hoverfly' - a back translation from its Latin name Volucella zonaria.
The lack of any English name is not really surprising, because 100 years ago this insect was virtually unknown in Britain. An important monograph on hoverflies, published in 1902, reported only two museum specimens 'reputed' to have been found here. Then, during the 1940s and 1950s, there was a series of sightings of this spectacular insect, which, as time went on, became more frequent.
Most black and yellow wasp-like hoverflies bear aphid-eating larvae so beloved of gardeners. Volucella larvae have a much more exotic life; they scavenge in wasp nests and eat all the left-over bits of dead insects brought back by the wasps to feed their own brood.
Volucella zonaria is now well established, at least in southern England. The same, or another one, came back later to buzz lazily around the garden. And despite my reassurances, it was still eyed very suspiciously by the girls.
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