{"id":205,"date":"2019-02-22T11:52:20","date_gmt":"2019-02-22T11:52:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.science4wildlife.com\/?p=205"},"modified":"2019-02-25T14:32:08","modified_gmt":"2019-02-25T14:32:08","slug":"un-bee-lievable-worlds-biggest-bee-rediscovered-in-indonesia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.science4wildlife.com\/index.php\/2019\/02\/22\/un-bee-lievable-worlds-biggest-bee-rediscovered-in-indonesia\/","title":{"rendered":"Un-bee-lievable! World\u2019s biggest bee rediscovered in Indonesia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
STING IN THE TALE: Wallace’s giant bee has been dubbed ‘the flying bulldog’. \u00a9 Clay Bolt<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It was\nfeared extinct for almost four decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But a team of North American and Australian biologists has filmed Wallace\u2019s giant bee (Megachile pluto<\/em>) alive on a remote island in Indonesia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First\ndiscovered in 1859 by renowned English naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, the\nthumb-sized species had not been seen since 1981, when American entomologist\nAdam Messer found it on three islands in the North Mollucas archipelago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And after a\nreport of two individuals being offered for sale online surfaced last year, a\nteam comprising Australian biologist Simon Robson, Canadian Glen Chilton of\nSaint Mary’s University, Eli Wyman of Princeton in the United States and photographer\nClay Bolt set out to search for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It\nwas basically four people who had a long-term interest in this bee just got\ntogether and said, ‘let’s spend the money, we’re going to go see if we can find\nit’,” Dr Robson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The species\nis known to burrow into aerial termite mounds to lay its eggs, and the quartet\nspent five days scouring tropical forest before hitting the jackpot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We\nwere in the forest and it was late in the afternoon, and we were wandering off\nfor a late lunch and one of us spotted a termite mound,” Dr. Robson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“One\nof us climbed up the tree and the hole was lined with resin and that was very\nencouraging, and we finally got the torch in there and we could see the bee in\nthere looking out at us.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Four times\nlarger than the European honeybee, the giant does not die after stinging, Dr.\nRobson continued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“This\nbee could probably sting you quite happily and then sting you again, it\nwouldn’t kill it,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c”In\nfact, if we’d found more we were very keen to get stung by it to see how\npainful it was. But because we only found one we didn’t want to annoy it and we\ndidn’t want to upset it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bee\nalso has huge, fearsome-looking mandibles which it uses to scrape resin from\ntrees to line its burrow and a wingspan of some six centimetres.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is threatened by deforestation and habitat loss, and its rediscovery comes in the wake of an alarming report suggesting that insect species numbers are crashing across the globe<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was feared extinct for almost four decades. But a team of North American and Australian biologists has filmed Wallace\u2019s giant bee (Megachile pluto) alive on a remote island in Indonesia. First discovered in 1859 by renowned English naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, the thumb-sized species had not been seen since 1981, when American entomologist Adam […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":207,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"rttpg_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/www.science4wildlife.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/image.jpg",1280,720,false],"landscape":["https:\/\/www.science4wildlife.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/image.jpg",1280,720,false],"portraits":["https:\/\/www.science4wildlife.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/image.jpg",1280,720,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.science4wildlife.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/image-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.science4wildlife.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/image-300x169.jpg",300,169,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.science4wildlife.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/image-1024x576.jpg",610,343,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.science4wildlife.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/image.jpg",1280,720,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.science4wildlife.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/image.jpg",1280,720,false],"post-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.science4wildlife.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/image-680x330.jpg",680,330,true],"evolve-post-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.science4wildlife.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/image-680x330.jpg",680,330,true],"evolve-slider-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.science4wildlife.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/image-400x300.jpg",400,300,true],"evolve-tabs-img":["https:\/\/www.science4wildlife.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/image-50x50.jpg",50,50,true],"evolve-testimonial-avatar":["https:\/\/www.science4wildlife.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/image-80x80.jpg",80,80,true]},"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"Matt Ford","author_link":"https:\/\/www.science4wildlife.com\/index.php\/author\/matt\/"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":"News<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"It was feared extinct for almost four decades. But a team of North American and Australian biologists has filmed Wallace\u2019s giant bee (Megachile pluto) alive on a remote island in Indonesia. First discovered in 1859 by renowned English naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, the thumb-sized species had not been seen since 1981, when American entomologist Adam…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.science4wildlife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.science4wildlife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.science4wildlife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.science4wildlife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.science4wildlife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.science4wildlife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":425,"href":"https:\/\/www.science4wildlife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions\/425"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.science4wildlife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.science4wildlife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.science4wildlife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.science4wildlife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}