You may have seen on social media and, indeed, be experiencing for yourself our ‘silent spring’, where the lamentably small numbers of invertebrates are causing grave concern. I have also found this – places where I would normally be seeing good numbers of bees, flies, butterflies and bugs are almost empty of life. So, I was even more pleased than usual last Monday when I spotted two Volucella bombylans hoverflies, one of each of the two colour variations, in a corner of a local field. These are bumblebee mimics, deliberately imitating bumble species so as to enter the nests of bumblebees to lay their eggs within.

Volucella bombylans var. plumata above mimics the White-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lucorum). I’ve included a photo of Bombus lucorum, above right, so you can see the two side by side. And, as you can see, the colouring of the second Volucella bombylans below is quite different. This is Volucella bombylans var. bombylans, which mimics the Red-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius) shown lower right. The mimicry isn’t perfect but it obviously works – if it didn’t, these hoverflies wouldn’t exist.