Flies are among the most frequent visitors to flowers and important pollinators of a wide range of plants. Syrphid flies are often referred to as flower flies. This group exhibits a characteristic flight pattern where they hover and can abruptly change their position. They are called hover flies in Great Britain. Syrphid flies can be easily mistaken for bees and wasps. However, flies have only one pair of wings while bees and wasps have two. Their large eyes, short antenna also give them away. They also have nowhere to carry pollen. Of the nearly 900 species of flower flies (family Syrphidae) in North America, most have yellow-and-black stripes.

There was a time you could find this bumblebee across most of North America from Quebec to Florida, westward to South Dakota then south into the central Mountains of Mexico. Within the past decade, though, its numbers have collapsed and it is strongly suspected it was infected with a virus when European bumblebees were imported into North America to pollinate greenhouse tomatoes. In spring the overwintering queens of our American bumblebee pollinate many spring wildflowers. It’s fun to watch these plump ladies hang upside down while they forage on the nodding flowers of trout lilies (Erythronium) or columbines (Aquilegia). Of course, they are collecting nectar and pollen to feed to their first brood of workers. Once the workers mature the queen stays home and her daughters pollinate the wildflowers and bushes of summer and autumn. Like most bumblebees in Canada and America the colony is annual. The queen dies in the autumn cold weeks after she produced new queens in late summer or early fall.   

• Geographic Distribution: True snowpool species that is most common in the northern U.S. and Canada to Alaska. Most commonly found in New Jersey.
• Larvae Characteristics: Larvae are present in late March and most often begin pupating during the 3rd week of April. Larvae are most common in deep snowpools filled with dark colored water in forested areas above elevations of 1500 ft. Usually the only large species mosquito present in a given pool.
• Habitat: Heavily forested areas at high elevations.
• Size: Large.
• Identification: Upper and lower head hairs are usually single, occasionally double. Antenna length is shorter than head and the tuft is inserted before the middle of the shaft. Long pointed gills frequently have a rusty color. Patched comb scales. Pecten is evenly spaced. In the anal segment the saddle is incomplete and with 2-4 precratal tufts.
• Other: Ades communis is a major pest in the Adirondacks in New York State and the Pocono Mountain range in Pennsylvania. It is one of the earliest mosquitoes to appear in the northeast monocyclic species.Sacks of pollen or pollinium can be seen carried by mosquitos after visiting pollen rich flowers. See yellow pollinium in the photo above.

We all know that female mosquitos bite and drink blood to provision the next generation of eggs but where do they get the energy to pester us? Some consume the sugars in flower nectar to fuel their attacks on us.  Here in North America, at least 15 species in the genus Aedes are known to drink the nectar of small-flowered, greenish orchids placed in the genus Platanthera. A paper suggesting that they also pollinated the orchid appeared in 1913. There’s no doubt now that, this insect has mouthparts long enough to reach the nectar in the orchid’s little spur. As she prepares to leave her the flower her head touches the sexual organs in the flower’s column and two golden “eggs” of pollen (pollinia) are deposited on her face because the eggs come complete with their own little stalks and sticky suction cups. Cross-pollination occurs when she visits a second flower on a second plant. Of the 15 species, Aedes communis is the best studied as it is so common on summer tundras and bogs where these little orchids may thrive. The great American authority on native orchids, Carlyle Luer, described how they hummed in swarms around the blunt leaf orchid carrying so many bright yellow balls of pollen the insects looked like they were wearing their own head lamps. Therefore, while this mosquito may be a bit…annoying...it should not be confused with its bad cousin, A. egypti, known to transmit yellow and dengue fevers. 

It’s easy to confuse this striking butterfly with the black swallowtail (Papilo polyxen)as both species have dark forewings and you can find some black swallowtails that also wear iridescent blue on their hind wings. The black swallowtail comes into our gardens to lay eggs on carrots, dill, parsley and other members of the celery family. In contrast, the caterpillars of our pipevines eat only the leaves of birthworts and dutchman’s pipes (Aristolochia). If you want to lure these butterflies into your garden you should provide them with birthwort vines available from native plant nurseries and seed companies. These woody vines are rather primitive and related to magnolias but native, American birthworts are pretty easy to grow if you have some dappled shade and add humus to your soil.  

This chunky, furry bee is smaller than a honeybee but very important to flower pollination in the mid-west. It visits a wide range of wildflowers native to our woodlands and prairies. As females don’t feed males the male bee must gather his own nectar and is also an important pollinator.   This includes his visits to the rare, Mead’s milkweed (Asclepias meadii). The Cypripedium reginae does not give the bee any reward and traps it temporarily in its sac.  Anthophora abrupta are potential pollinators of many important crops including: cranberry, tomato, blackberry, asparagus, persimmon, clover and raspberry.