Spilomyia syrphid, Home

With genuine heat returning and no lake to retreat to, I've been keeping my walks to a minimum, what with my elder status and the dire warnings about overexertion in the hot weather—yeah, right... So instead of long-distance treks, I've stuck closer to home, and one of the things I've been doing is combing the flowers for new insects. This one, on a viburnum blossom, was especially striking, since, at first glance, I thought it was a kind of Yellow Jacket. On closer inspection, however, it turns out not to be a bee at all, but a very good bee mimic known as a Syrphid, or Flower, Fly. The first giveaway is that it only has two wings—all bees have four. The antennae are too short for a Yellow Jacket, and those banded eyes—nothing like them among local bona fide Hymenoptera. The mimicry is so strong that it took me a while to convince myself that I was watching a harmless member of the Diptera, but a long trip through BugGuide did the trick. The insect in the lens is a member of the Syrphid genus Spilomyia. I'll leave species determination for another day.