BBC Radio 4 LW

Living World

Factual: Science & Nature: Nature & Environment

The Living World

Getting up close and personal with wild nature in Britain and beyond.

Intimate encounters and extraordinary observations of wild nature in Britain and beyond.

Living World: Bee-flies

Bee-flies

BBC Radio 4 - Living World, Bee-flies

Joanna Pinnock discovers the extraordinary masquerade of the large bee-fly.

Joanna Pinnock joins naturalist John Walters in Devon to find out more about a bee mimic, the dark-edged bee-fly.  Like the cuckoo, its young develop in others' nests. 

There's a pretender on the wing.  Joanna Pinnock joins naturalist John Walters in Devon to find out more about a bee mimic, the Dark Edged bee fly.  With its reddish hairy body and rapier-like proboscis it's said to look part bee, part mosquito and is often spotted in gardens in Spring hovering and darting above the ground.  The long proboscis helps it take nectar from deep within flowers rather like a hummingbird. 

While this furry, buzzing, rather attractive fly is harmless to humans, its pretence of being a bee is to help its young get a good start in life by using others' nests.  In Spring the female bee fly coats her eggs in dust to give them some added weight and then hovering near solitary bee nesting holes will flick her eggs at the entrance.  As they develop, her larvae head inside the bee's nest and devour the emerging bee larvae.   It's a fly-eat-bee world. (First broadcast in 2012).

Producer: Sheena Duncan
Editor: Julian Hector

BBC Radio 4

BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

Radio 4

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Living World

Bee-flies

Genres

Brand

BBC Radio 4 LW

About BBC Radio 4