So you may remember a few blog post's ago, I spoke about Batesian mimicry so here I present you probably one of my favourites... Volucella zonaria - the hornet mimic hoverfly. Reaching up to 2cm the hornet mimic is one of our largest hoverflies and also one of our most striking. Their bright orange/yellow abdomens with black bands as the name suggest make them look an awful lot like hornets but these guys are completely harmless to us and don't even have a stinger. These hoverflies live in social wasp nests, but how without being stung I hear you ask? They are basically the in house cleaning for the wasps, the larvae eat the debris in the nest so they keep the place nice and tidy and who in their right mind is going to turn down a free cleaner? Once classed as rare in the UK there is now an abundance in the south and south-west and as our climate warms they are beginning to head up north of the country. You can tell these apart from hornets 1. The hoverfly has those big goofy eyes, hornets eyes are a lot smaller, darker and less goofy looking. 2. Hornet's have 2 sets of wings like bees and wasps, whereas flies only have one set of wings. There are a few other ways of telling, from colouring to banding but I'm not expecting you to get that close to a hornet to find out
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