The other day my daughter and I noticed a small, slug-like caterpillar-y thing eating aphids that had infested a wild lettuce plant.

I looked around a bit tonight online and ID’d the critter: it was a syrphid fly larva.

Syrphid flies, also called hover flies or flower flies, are pretty ubiquitous insects in the summertime, so you’ve probably seen them. Many have coloring similar to bees (yellow and black stripes) although they don’t sting, and they are (usually) much smaller than a honeybee. They’re called hover flies because they can hover in place in the air.

Here’s a great site on syrphid flies including how to tell whether a bee-like insect is really a bee, or a fly in bee’s clothing.

I knew syrphid flies were a beneficial insect from my organic gardening days, but I’d never seen a larva in action before. Pretty cool. If you like that sort of thing ;-)