Marmalade hoverfly

Not to be confused with

• Common wasp — Wings and waist. The RHS puts the rule plainly: "the characteristic feature of true flies is that they have only two wings (one pair) compared to most other insects such as bees and wasps which have four wings (two pairs)". A marmalade hoverfly has one pair. It also has no narrow wasp waist, huge eyes filling most of its head, and stubby antennae instead of a wasp's long jointed ones. And it hovers — genuinely stationary in mid-air — which a wasp does not. It has no sting at all.
• Other banded hoverflies — The band pattern is the species-level clincher. The marmalade hoverfly carries two black bands on each abdominal segment — one thick and one thin, described by The Wildlife Trusts as "'thin cut', 'thick cut'" like the marmalade it is named for. Most other orange-and-black hoverflies of this size show one band per segment. If you can get a photograph of the abdomen, the doubled bands settle it.
• Honeybee — A honeybee is furry, thick-bodied and amber-brown with four wings and elbowed antennae, and works flowers steadily one after another. A marmalade hoverfly is smooth, slim, bright orange-and-black, has one pair of wings, and hangs in the air between visits. A honeybee also never stops dead in mid-flight the way a hoverfly does.

It is a fly, and it cannot sting you

The marmalade hoverfly is a wasp mimic doing an extremely good job on a very cheap budget, and it works because people identify insects by colour. The tell is the wings. The RHS states the rule: "the characteristic feature of true flies is that they have only two wings (one pair) compared to most other insects such as bees and wasps which have four wings (two pairs)." Beyond that, the head gives it away instantly once you know — enormous eyes taking up most of it, and tiny stubby antennae rather than a wasp's long jointed ones. So does the flight: it hangs stock-still in mid-air, then flicks sideways and stops again, which nothing with a sting does. It has no sting and no bite. Swatting one is a small loss, since it is one of the more useful insects in the garden.

The best reason on this site to leave aphids alone

Hoverfly larvae are aphid predators, and the numbers matter. The RHS puts them alongside the insect everyone already trusts: "approaching half of British hoverflies are aphid predators as larvae and are as important as ladybirds in reducing populations of aphids." The larvae are legless, blind, translucent little slugs that most gardeners have seen on an infested shoot without recognising, and they work their way through the colony they hatched in. That gives a concrete instruction. When greenfly appear on the roses in May, the useful move is usually to do nothing for a fortnight. Spraying — even with something advertised as organic — removes the aphids, and with them the food that would have produced the next generation of predators. The RHS advice is the same: "tolerating the presence of aphids and other prey on some plants will provide a food source for hoverflies and can help promote a natural balance in the garden."

Flowers a short tongue can reach

Hoverflies are frequently left out of pollinator planting, and the plants chosen for bumblebees often do not suit them. A marmalade hoverfly has short mouthparts and cannot reach nectar down a long floral tube, so a border built around foxgloves, penstemons and honeysuckle offers it very little. What it wants is open and shallow: flat daisy faces, umbels, and the small massed flowers of herbs left to bloom. Letting mint, thyme, marjoram and fennel flower rather than clipping them for the kitchen turns them into hoverfly plants overnight. So does leaving a patch of hogweed or cow parsley at the edge of a garden. This is also why a hoverfly-friendly garden looks slightly less manicured than a bee-friendly one: the plants that suit it are the ones most gardeners deadhead.

The year-round hoverfly

Most garden insects have a season. This one, more or less, does not. The Wildlife Trusts give its flight period as January to December, with numbers peaking in summer, and note that "in some years, huge numbers migrate here from the continent when they can be seen busily feeding on flowers near the coast". Those arrivals can be spectacular, and they are the reason a garden can go from a handful of hoverflies to hundreds within days in high summer. Practically, the year-round presence means that winter and early-spring flowers matter to this species in a way they do not to most insects a gardener plants for. Anything open-faced and in flower between November and March — winter heathers, early hellebores, the first dandelions — will be used, and the earliest adults are the ones that seed the first aphid-eating generation of the year.

Plant this for it

• roseRoses reliably carry the early aphid colonies that adult hoverflies lay their eggs into, so an unsprayed rose is a hoverfly nursery rather than a problem.
• mintLeft to flower instead of clipped, mint produces exactly the small, open, shallow flowers a short-tongued hoverfly can actually feed from.
• thymeMasses of tiny open flowers in full sun, at a height hoverflies work readily — and thyme thrives in the dry sunny spots where they bask.

How we checked this

• RHS: Hoverflies
• The Wildlife Trusts: Marmalade fly

Checked against the sources above. Reviewed on 2026-09-20. Legal position checked 2026-09-20.