These bee look-alikes are friendly in garden

Don't swat or scorn every beelike insect that comes your way. The insect could be a harmless syrphid fly, a creature whose friendship is worth pursuing.

With bright stripes of yellow, brown, and black, and sometimes hairy bodies, syrphid flies do indeed resemble bees or yellow jackets. But syrphid flies have only one pair of wings in contrast to the two pairs on bees or wasps. Syrphid flies also have a distinctive way of flying, hovering in place for a few seconds, then darting off quickly to hover somewhere else, much like hummingbirds. For this reason they are also called "hover flies."

Syrphid flies neither bite nor sting humans, but do eat plant pests, and do so with more appetite than even ladybugs. Some syrphid flies prey on ants, bees, and wasps, and some are so cunning as to make themselves right at home within the nest of their prey.

It is the syrphid fly larva that preys on other insects. The larva is no beauty, having the overall shape of a slug and the buff greenish or brownish color, the velvety smoothness and the stumpy legs of a caterpillar. But what an appetite! It gobbles up aphids at the rate of one a minute, and enjoys meals of various caterpillars, beetles, thrips and sawfly larvae.

Make your garden friendly to syrphid flies by planting flowers that attract them. The adults eat nectar and pollen, and are most enticed by flowers that are small enough to be easily accessible and have a long period of bloom. Among the best flowers for this purpose are those in the carrot family, which includes, besides carrot, Queen Anne's lace, dill, fennel, cilantro, tansy and yarrow. Mints also attract them, as do candytuft and all sorts of daisies.

As unfriendly to the syrphid fly as swatting them is the indiscriminate use of insecticides. If you must use an insecticide, try to find one that is specifically toxic to the insect pest that you are trying to control, and then spot-treat only those plants that are being attacked. Even some "organic" sprays can be toxic to syrphid flies.

So make your garden friendly to syrphid flies, and they will happily hover around your flowers, eating pollen and nectar and laying eggs. Watch for their pupae, which look like grape seeds attached to the leaves and soon become aphid-devouring monsters.