These large flies first become obvious in mid-summer. This individual has spent the past two days near some old railroad ties we used in past landscaping.
Females seek unprotected nests containing large carpenter bee (Xylocopa sp.) larvae. If successful, the female tiger bee fly lay hers eggs in the nest, and her larvae feed on the carpenter bee larvae.
[…] I missed the memo about Photo Bombing blogs, as Matt Bergeron, Dave Stone and Alex Wild all showed off gorgeous photos of bombyliid bee […]