Walk through a mustard field in Rajasthan in February and the hum you hear is not all honeybee. Look closer at the yellow flowers and you will find hoverflies, small, striped, and easy to mistake for bees, moving between florets with a speed and persistence that rivals anything Apis cerana manages. India has roughly 450 described hoverfly species, and their contribution to crop pollination has been systematically undercounted because most pollinator research begins and ends with bees.
