On 5 Apr 2011 13:20:00 GMT, wrote:

I realised last summer that I'm very bad at identifying bees which aren't
bumble or honey bees. I've taken a photo of something that was slugging
around on the allotment and I assumed it was a wasp, but having looked a bit
closer (now it's HUGE rather than on a diddly screen), it looks a bit more
hairy than I had thought, so have I mis-assigned it to the wasp family?

Looks like a fly mimicking a bumblebee. There are many different fly
species that mimic bees or wasps.

Steve