Cheilosia illustrata

Common Name: N/A

Cheilosia illustrata is an attractive bumble bee mimic featuring a conspicuous dark wing cloud. The body is mainly covered in very pale hairs, but usually displays a well-developed band of black hairs across the thorax, and another across tergite 3.

The tip of the abdomen often has a visible covering of reddish orange hairs. The black hair bands can be much weaker on some specimens, especially males, so that entirely pale-haired forms are less-recognisable, apart from the wing cloud. There should be little chance of confusing this species with any other, though dark male Leucozona lucorum look somewhat similar because of the dark wing cloud.

It is a widespread and fairly abundant midsummer species on umbellifer flowers in hedgerows and at woodland edges throughout Britain and Ireland, wherever hogweed or angelica are present.

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