Beautiful Hover Fly
Female, Posterior
Wasp-mimicking Hover Fly
Dorsal
| Beautiful Hover Fly Female, Posterior | | Wasp-mimicking Hover Fly Dorsal | | ||
 | Class: | Animals (Animalia) - Jointed Legs (Arthropoda) - Insects (Insecta) | |||
| Order: | Flies (Diptera) | ||||
| Family: | Hover Fly (Syrphidae) iNaturalist Observation | ||||
| Species: | Wasp-mimicking Hover Fly (Ceriana ornata ssp ornata) | ||||
| This Photo: | Near Bee Hive | ||||
Thank you Reiner Richter for confirming the id of this species for us General Species Information: Found on Ellura (in the Murray Mallee, SA) and elsewhere This is primarily a Qld species that invades bee hives. As we have no native bee hives in SA, we suspect they've travelled south using/breeding/surviving thru European bee hives. Andras Szito (WA DPIRD) said "I believe your suspicion is well founded. I am aware of (sometimes large scale) movement of used bee hives between the states. If some brought in some used, uncleaned hives with some dead combs in them from Qld where Ceriana is quite common then there is a high likelihood that there were viable Ceriana in it. I guess it is well adapted to European bee hives that contains a lot greater amount of honey than native bees." Thanks for your thoughts Andras ergo It is also introduced. | |||||
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