I posted on the bees that visit my oregano bushes, but neglected the other stripy visitors. Hoverflies look like bees and wasps, and have evolved this way to protect them from predation - but having only one pair of wings is a giveaway that they are flies.
Eristalis look like bees. In fact they are called drone flies, because they resemble honey bee drones (the males which don't do any work, just mate with the queen. There are worse lives). Their larvae live in water and breathe through a long snorkel, giving them the name rat-tailed maggots. Over ten species of Eristalis are recorded from Switzerland.
The impressive
Helophilus look more like wasps. There are five species in Switzerland.
This big beauty is
Volucella zonaria. It mimics hornets, and even it lays its eggs in the nests of hornets and bees where they feed and grow to adults.
This fly certainly has a yellowish abdomen, but it is not a hoverfly. It doesn't have the wrap around sunglasses look, but rather has parted staring eyes on a pointy face and spiky hairs on its body. It looks mean, and it is. It is a tachanid - a parasitic fly which lays its eggs inside other insects, where they hatch and grow and feed until the host dies. Nice. This one is a species of
Nowickia, which parasitize moth caterpillars.
