At 2:44 PM -0400 8/1/98, John J. Kriz wrote:
>I saw a "bee" on my bee balm recently I cannot identify.  It's about the
>length of three bumblebees, but does not seem to have a sectioned body.
>It flies like a hummingbird.  The front half of the body is pale
>brownish orange.  The aft end is an Indian Red, with a stripe of that
>brownish orange, then the Indian Red again.  The very end of it is
>squared off, and seems to look like a lobsteer's tail.
>
>Any idea what this is??
 
I saw some insects like this recently on a butterfly bush. Their colors
were not the same as you describe, but they did have a squared off tail,
like a lobster.  They were an olive green in front, and the abdomen was
darker, and as I recall, striped. I remember flashes of red and white on
the tails.  I think they were moths.  They had prominent black antennae,
which seemed feathery, and the wings, which moved too fast to be seen,
seemed to have the general shape of moth wings.  They never landed on the
flowers, but fed through a long proboscis that may have been half as long
as their body.
 
My first impression was that they flew like hummingbirds, but they are much
smaller than the ruby-throats, which are the only hummingbirds on the east
coast.