Insects require enormous amounts of energy to beat their wings rapidly.
To lessen the demand for energy, insects have reduced the weight of the wings, the amount of drag created during wing movement, and the overall body size and weight. Appropriately the fastest recorded wing beat was achieved by a small, lightweight ceratopogonid midge. I also searched Biological Abstracts on CD- ROM but it was not helpful. The most useful technique was locating citations of primary literature in published books on insect flight. However, insects do not read our texts on physiology and biochemistry and there are currently two recorded exceptions to this limit.