Sybil Jones age 10 of Victoria,, British Columbia, or her question.

­Are bees and flies members of the same family?

The insects make up the biggest tribe of creatures on earth. So far, some 600,000 of them have been described and named. Experts tell us that a few million more insects are still unnamed and unclassified. Insects have lived on earth for some 200 million years, Mankind has been here perhaps less than one million years.

The immense tribe of insects has been sorted into 25 family groups, or orders. The biggest order is Coleoptera. It is the beetle family. So far a quarter of a million beetles have been classified,

The showiest order of insects is called Lepidopteraw This is the handsome family of moths and butterflies, Still another order is Orthoptera. Grasshoppers and crickets belong to this family. All the different families are insects. All insects bodies are in three parts. They also have six legs and no inside bones, The differences in the family groups lie in other things.

The fly family is called Diptera. Like all insects, the flies have bodies in three parts, have six legs and no inside bones. But, unlike the crickets and butterflies, they have only two wings, A second pair of wings has developed into two little stubs, The fly uses these for balancing when in flight. Flies are unable to chew because they have only sucking mouths, Most of them are smallish insects with large eyes and small antennae. Bluebottles, houseflies, horse‑flies and deer flies are members of Dipter and so are mosquitoes.

Bees, wasps and ants belong to the order called Hymenoptera, They have mouths for both ,chewng and sucking. All should wear two pairs of gauzy wings. But certain of the ants either fail to develop wings or bite them off. Hymenoptera is a very social family, Many of its members live together in colonies  It is the only insect family to have real tail stingers,

Both bees and flies go through the same stage of development. They begin life as eggs hatch into larvae  pupae and then hatch into full‑grown adults. Both bees and flies are insects, But when it comes to family membership there is a difference. The bees belong to Hymenoptera ‑ the gauzy‑winged ones. The flies belong to Diptera ‑ the two‑winged ones.