Wheel bug feeding on honey bee

Noticed this large adult “wheel bug” hanging out on a sunflower in the garden yesterday at Steiner Field. After further observation, I noticed that the wheel bug was feeding on a honey bee, which they ambush as the bee is harvesting nectar. Turns out that the Wheel and Assassin Bug enjoy feeding on honey bee’s and will even wait near the hive in order to catch them easily. Wheel bugs are also praised by gardeners as being as beneficial to gardens as ladybugs, as they feed mostly on pests like caterpillars, stink bugs, and beetles. Professor of Entomology Dr Mike Raupp at the University of Maryland regards the wheel bug as being “the lion or eagle of your feed web”, and also says this about them:

“They sit on top. When you have these big, ferocious predators in your landscape, that tells me that this is a very healthy landscape, because all these other levels in your food web are intact.”