Image copyright Clay Bolt Image caption A single female Wallace's giant bee was found

The world's biggest bee has been re-discovered, after decades thought lost to science.

The giant bee - which is as long as an adult's thumb - was found on a little-explored Indonesian island.

After days of searching, wildlife experts found a single live female, which they photographed and filmed.

Known as Wallace's giant bee, the insect is named after the British naturalist and explorer Alfred Russel Wallace, who described it in 1858.

Scientists found several specimens in 1981 on three Indonesia islands. It has not been seen alive since, although there was a report last year of two bee specimens being offered for sale online.

In January, a team followed in Wallace's footsteps on a journey through Indonesia in an attempt to find and photograph the bee.

Image copyright Clay Bolt Image caption Eli Wyman with one of the few known Wallace's giant bee samples

"It was absolutely breathtaking to see this 'flying bulldog' of an insect that we weren't sure existed anymore, to have real proof right there in front of us in the wild," said natural history photographer, Clay Bolt, who took the first photos and video of the species alive.

"To actually see how beautiful and big the species is in life, to hear the sound of its giant wings thrumming as it flew past my head, was just incredible. "

Wallace's giant bee (Megachile pluto)

With an estimated wingspan of two-and-a-half inches (6 cm), Wallace's giant bee is the world's largest bee

The female makes her nest in termite mounds, using her large jaw to collect sticky tree resin to line the nest and protect it from invading termites

The species depends on primary lowland forest for resin and the nests of tree-dwelling termites

Wallace, who co-developed the theory of evolution with Charles Darwin, described the bee as, "a large black wasp-like insect, with immense jaws like a stag-beetle".

The discovery, in the Indonesian islands known as the North Moluccas, raises hopes that the region's forests still harbour one of the rarest and most sought after insects in the world.

There are currently no legal protections around its trade.

Trip member and bee expert Eli Wyman, an entomologist at Princeton University, said he hoped the rediscovery would spark research towards a deeper understanding of the life history of the bee and inform any future efforts to protect it from extinction.

Wallace's giant bee is currently listed as vulnerable to extinction, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

However, the international trade of this species is currently not restricted by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

Environmental group, Global Wildlife Conservation (GWC), which has launched a worldwide hunt for "lost species", supported the trip to find the bee.

"By making the bee a world-famous flagship for conservation, we are confident that the species has a brighter future than if we just let it quietly be collected into oblivion," said Robin Moore.

In January, the group announced they had found more rare Bolivian frogs belonging to a species thought to be down to one male.

World's 'loneliest' frog gets a date

Follow Helen on Twitter.</s>After eluding researchers for nearly four decades, the world's largest bee has been discovered alive and well on a densely forested Indonesian island.

“It was absolutely breathtaking to see this ‘flying bulldog’ of an insect that we weren’t sure existed anymore, to have real proof right there in front of us in the wild,” Clay Bolt, a natural history photographer specializing in bees, said in a statement. “To actually see how beautiful and big the species is in life, to hear the sound of its giant wings thrumming as it flew past my head, was just incredible."

First discovered by Alfred Russel Wallace in 1859, Megachile pluto, also known as "Wallace's giant bee," has a body measuring roughly 1.5 inches long and a wingspan of nearly 2.5 inches. It also features a set of imposing pinchers, which it uses to gather resin and wood for its nest. The species is so incredibly rare and elusive, that it wasn't seen again until 1981 when American biologist Adam Messer discovered the nests of six solitary giants.

“Messer’s rediscovery gave us some insight, but we still know next to nothing about this extraordinary insect,” said trip member and bee expert Eli Wyman, an entomologist at Princeton University.

Wallace's giant bee, the world's largest species of bee, being photographed outside its nest somewhere in the Indonesian islands of North Moluccas. (Photo: © Simon Robson)

In the quest to find a bee that many feared had gone extinct, Bolt and his team traveled to the Indonesian islands known as the North Moluccas in January 2019. Both the location and timing matched the earlier discoveries made by both Wallace and Messer. They also knew that the giant bees had a preference for using arboreal termite mounds for their nests. For four days, the team and local village guides climbed ladders and started at termite mounds for 20 minutes at a time for signs of the bee. On the fifth day, with all members of the team suffering from various illnesses, they decided to check out one more mound about eight feet off the ground.

"Eli climbed up and immediately felt for certain that it was a bee nest," Bolt wrote in an account of the discovery. "The structure was just too perfect and similar to what we expected to find. I climbed up next and my headlamp glinted on the most remarkable thing I’d ever laid my eyes on. I simply couldn’t believe it: We had rediscovered Wallace’s Giant Bee."

After capturing the female specimen, the team took photos and video (shown below), and then carefully returned the bee to her nest. "We were elated," added Bolt.

As you might expect, the world's largest bee also comes with a giant stinger. Surprisingly, however, the one thing the researchers lamented was the fact that they did not have the opportunity to feel its punch.

“We were very keen to be stung by the bee,” professor and team member Simon Robson told the Sydney Morning Herald. "People who work on bees get very excited about the pain levels of various bees, whether it's indifferent or like being shot by a bullet. But because we only found one, we did not want to harass it too much."

Now that the bee's rediscovery has been made public, the team is working with Indonesian researchers and conservation groups to help protect the critical habitat necessary for its survival. According to Global Wildlife Conservation — which earlier named the bee to its top 25 most wanted species in its Search for Lost Species program — forest destruction for agriculture is a growing issue for the Indonesian archipelago.

“I hope this rediscovery will spark future research that will give us a deeper understanding of the life history of this very unique bee and inform any future efforts to protect it from extinction," added Wyman.

Dubbed the 'flying bulldog,' this extremely rare bee has been lost to science since 1981.</s>World's Largest Bee Is Spotted For First Time In Decades

You might think the world's biggest bee would be easy to find. But that's not the case: Until recently, the last time anyone had reported seeing Wallace's giant bee living in the wild was in 1981. That changed in January, when the rare bee was spotted on an island in Indonesia.

Wallace's giant bee — Megachile pluto — towers over European honey bees. The female's size has been recorded as at least an inch and a half long, with a tongue that's nearly an inch long. Add to that a pair of gigantic mandibles, and it's a bee like no other.

"It was absolutely breathtaking to see this 'flying bulldog' of an insect that we weren't sure existed anymore, to have real proof right there in front of us in the wild," said natural history photographer Clay Bolt, who was part of a small team that sought out Wallace's giant bee.

The team found a female bee living in a termite nest on the side of a tree — the large bee's preferred habitat. The female Wallace's giant bees use resin and wood to create tunnels and cells in existing nests, carving out their own living space away from the termites.

"To actually see how beautiful and big the species is in life, to hear the sound of its giant wings thrumming as it flew past my head, was just incredible," Bolt said.

About that sound: Touting their discovery, the team posted B-roll (!) video of Wallace's giant bee flying around in a small enclosure, its wings sounding like a deep drone compared to the high-pitched buzz of honey bees.

It's not unusual for the Wallace's giant bee to go long periods without being seen by humans. It's been observed only a handful of times since it was discovered in the 1850s by British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace. When the bee was last rediscovered in 1981, it had been presumed extinct.

"I've been saying it's thought to be extinct," said professor Dave Goulson, who heads a bee lab at the University of Sussex. "I was happy to hear that's not the case."

The breakthrough find came on the final day of a five-day trip to Indonesia's North Molucca islands. Bolt's visit to Indonesia came as part of Global Wildlife Conservation's Search for Lost Species program. Others on the trip included Princeton University entomologist Eli Wyman; Simon Robson, a biology professor at the University of Sydney in Australia; and Glen Chilton, a professor at Saint Mary's University in Canada.

In addition to its Brobdingnagian size, Wallace's giant bee sports unusually large mandibles, which are often compared to a stag beetle's.

The bee's mouthparts also include a large labrum; in the early 1980s, entomologist Adam Catton Messer described watching a female Wallace's giant bee using its mandibles to scrape resin from a tree, and using its labrum and mandibles to roll the resin into a large ball — which it then carried as it flew back to its nest.

"Messer's rediscovery gave us some insight, but we still know next to nothing about this extraordinary insect," Wyman said, echoing the reaction of other experts after the bee was spotted anew.

In theory, Goulson said, the large mandibles are similar to mason bees, which use them to help form the balls of mud that shape their nests. But those apian relatives are nowhere near as imposing as Wallace's giant bee, he added.

Messer found several of the bees living in mountainous terrain of three islands in the North Moluccas, near the Equator.

That remote location is a main reason Wallace's bee has been seen so infrequently, said Goulson, who has written several books about bees. And now, he added, that sheer remoteness might help protect it from anyone seeking to get into the bee-poaching business and sell a rare specimen.

Bolt and Wyman say they want their discovery to draw attention to the bee — and to the need to protect it. The world's largest bee faces potential risks that range from insect collectors to the loss of its habitat from palm oil operations and other activity.

"Despite an abundance of potential nesting sites, the bee appears to be rare," Messer wrote of his rediscovery in the 1980s. "Local informants had never seen the bee prior to its rediscovery, although a specific folk epithet, o ofungu ma koana, 'king bee,' is based on it."

As has been the case with other historic perceptions about bees, the king bee turned out to be a queen: the females are far larger than the males, which measure less than one inch in length.</s>While you would think it would be hard for a bee the size of a thumb to go missing, Wallace’s giant bee did just that. The jaw-dropping giant disappeared for 38 years and scientists and bee lovers were convinced it had gone extinct like so many other insects. Luckily, they were wrong. The world’s largest bee—the Wallace’s giant bee or has been rediscovered, minding its own beeswax on Indonesian’s North Moluccas islands.

The bee’s disappearing act was foiled by an intrepid and determined search team of North American and Australian biologists who wanted to figure out once and for all whether the bee still existed. reports that the scientists found the answer in a termite’s nest in a tree, where a single female Wallace’s giant bee had set up a home. The bee, which photographer Clay Bolt described as a “flying bulldog” calling the entire experience of snapping the first photo of the newly-rediscovered bee “absolutely breathtaking”, which is exactly what someone who saw a flying bulldog would say. The bees live up to their reputation. The females can grow up to four centimeters long and have a wingspan of 2.5 inches. “It’s just ridiculously large,” Simon Robson, a biologist at the University of Sydney in Australia and a member of the expedition, told .

The giant bee has always been reclusive. It was first documented in 1858 by British explorer and naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace (he helped Charles Darwin come up with the theory of evolution) and was then not seen again until 1981, Bolt writes in a blog post. It’s been playing hide and seek ever since. Bolt teamed up with entomologist Eli Wyman and convinced Global Wildlife Conservation, a nonprofit group that sends out search parties to hunt for “lost” species — animals that haven’t been spotted in at least a decade— to add Wallace’s Giant Bee to their list. They collaborated with Robson and Canadian-born writer Glen Chilton to track down the elusive monster bee—and they succeeded. Don’t worry there are plenty of other lost animals to find, including the Pink-Headed Duck, the Fernandina Galápagos Tortoise, and the Namdapha Flying Squirrel.

While the bee has once-again been found, it’s hard to say how long it will stay. Currently there is no protection for the bee’s habitat, which is threatened by deforestation for agricultural purposes, meaning that while Wallace’s giant bee isn’t extinct yet, it may be in the not-too-distant future.</s>Looking at a picture of Wallace's giant bee, you wouldn't pick this insect as elusive.

Four times as big as a honeybee, and a stark black colour, it looks like the security guard or bouncer of the bee world. But researchers have just released the first photos and video of a live Wallace's giant bee (Megachile pluto) ever taken – a species that has been lost to science since 1981.

How it stayed hidden is mind-boggling. The females (or queens) have wingspans of more than six centimetres (2.5 inches); it's the world's largest known living bee species.

They live in arboreal termite mounds (that's termite mounds in trees) on a few of the northern Maluku islands in Indonesia, and use their huge mandibles to collect tree resin to line the nest, keeping termites out of their area of the mound.

The scientific history of this giant bee is honestly pretty short. Back in 1858, British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace (a contemporary of Charles Darwin) first collected the bee and it was given the common name Wallace's giant bee.

This was the last scientific sighting of the bee - it was even thought to be extinct – until rediscovery over 100 years later in 1981 by entomologist Adam Messer.

He found six nests in the Bacan Islands, and managed to find out some important information about its nesting and physiology; since then, there had been no new sightings.

Now, this is partly to do with location. Northern Maluku is pretty remote, especially the areas where these bees would hang out.

Sadly, the IUCN Red List classes Wallace's giant bee as vulnerable, "due to mining and to the impacts of invasive plant species" in the area.

Which brings us up to the present day. Late last month, a group of four researchers - Glen Chilton, Eli Wyman, Clay Bolt and Simon Robson - all from different scientific backgrounds and institutions across the globe, set off to Indonesia to see if they could find the elusive bug.

"Glen and I became aware that Eli and Clay were also planning to search for the bee. We decided to join forces, met for the first time in Indonesia and travelled into the field together. Each of us brought our own expertise, we couldn't have found it without everyone's involvement, it was a fantastic group effort," Robson told ScienceAlert.

"I brought expertise as a specialist in the study of insect behaviour. I also tried to ensure there were cold beers available each night to help us recuperate."

It wasn't an easy task, and for five days they travelled through the forest of North Maluku, staring at termite mounds for twenty minutes at a time, trying to see if they could notice any movement that would give away the bee.

On the last day, it was actually one of their Indonesian guides, Iswan Maujud, who spotted a low termite mound, and first laid eyes on the bee's nest.

"Iswan, ever the eagle eye, spotted a low termite mound, around eight feet from the ground … we immediately noticed that it had a hole in it, like many other nests we'd seen, but this one was a little more perfect. It was very round, and just the size that a giant bee might use," explained Bolt in an article about the expedition over at Global Wildlife.

"I climbed up next and my headlamp glinted on the most remarkable thing I'd ever laid my eyes on. I simply couldn't believe it: we had rediscovered Wallace's giant bee."

The team took videos and pictures of the huge bee, and then returned her to her nest.

But the researchers aren't done yet. Because there have been so few, short sightings of the bee, we still know very little about it.

"It challenges us to understand many aspects about its evolution, behaviour and role in the environment," said Robson.

"Are they specialised plants that depend on this species for pollination, for example. How does the sensory system of an insect this big work? What is its social biology?"

The team is now working with Indonesian collaborators to find the bee in other locations, and discover more about it.

"To join with a group of like-minded individuals and immerse ourselves in the biology of the region was fantastic. To be able to rediscover this species together, we hope will have positive results for conservation biology generally," said Robson.

"It was one of the best holidays I have ever had."</s>This undated handout picture provided by Global Wildlife Conservation shows entomologist and bee expert Eli Wyman with a Wallace's giant bee (Megachile pluto) in the Indonesian islands of the North Malukus.

The world's largest bee - a giant insect roughly the size of a human thumb - has been rediscovered in a remote part of Indonesia in its first sighting in nearly 40 years, researchers said Thursday.

Despite its conspicuous size, no one had observed Wallace's Giant Bee - discovered in the 19th century by British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace and nicknamed the "flying bulldog" - in the wild since 1981, the Global Wildlife Conservation said.

"To actually see how beautiful and big the species is in life, to hear the sound of its giant wings … was just incredible," said Clay Bolt, a specialist bee photographer who captured and photographed the enormous insect before releasing it unharmed.

"My dream is now to elevate this bee to a symbol of conservation in this part of Indonesia, a point of pride for the locals there."

The bee (full name Megachile pluto), which lives in the Indonesian island region of North Malukus, makes its nest in termite mounds, using its large fang-like mandibles to collect sticky resin to protect its home from the termites.

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species lists the bee as "vulnerable", meaning that while its numbers are relatively solid, the remoteness of its population makes it hard to study.

Several previous expeditions to the region where the bee lives failed to spot it.

Indonesia is home to an abundant variety of flora and fauna but there are fears for some animal and insect communities as forests being cut down for agriculture threaten many species' natural habitat.

"I hope this rediscovery will spark future research that will give us a deeper understanding of the life history of this very unique bee and inform any future efforts to protect it from extinction," said Eli Wyman, an entomologist at Princeton University who accompanied Bolt on the trip.

READ ALSO: She lives! Giant tortoise thought extinct for a century is found alive</s>One of the first images of a living Wallace’s giant bee. Megachile pluto is the world’s largest bee, which is approximately 4x times larger than a European honey bee. (Composite). Photo by Clay Bolt.

(WHDH) — An extremely rare bee that is considered to be the largest in the world was feared to be extinct for nearly 40 years. That’s not the case anymore.

Wallace’s Giant Bee, which Life Science described as a “nightmare” of a creature, was spotted in the Indonesian province of North Maluku in January. Researchers had not seen the bee since 1981.

The giant insects are said to boast a 2.5-inch wingspan, along with “enormous mandibles.”

“It was absolutely breathtaking to see this ‘flying bulldog’ of an insect that we weren’t sure existed anymore, to have real proof right there in front of us in the wild,” said Clay Bolt, a natural history photographer specializing in bees, who took the first photos and video of the species alive after spending years researching the right habitat type with trip partner, Eli Wyman.

The insects are about four times larger than the common honey bee or about as long as a human thumb. They typically build their nests in termite dwellings.

“To actually see how beautiful and big the species is in life, to hear the sound of its giant wings thrumming as it flew past my head, was just incredible,” Bolt added. “My dream is to now use this rediscovery to elevate this bee to a symbol of conservation in this part of Indonesia, and a point of pride for the locals there.”

Because of the bee’s impressive size and rare status, the species has been a target for wildlife trade collectors, researchers said.</s>Last seen in 1981 and thought to be extinct, the world’s largest bee, Wallace’s Giant Bee, has been confirmed alive in the wilderness of Indonesia by an international team of scientists and conservationists.

According to a statement published by the University of Sydney on Friday, the search team successfully rediscovered the species in January in the North Moluccas, an island cluster in Indonesia.

With a wingspan of six centimeters and a body the size of a human thumb, the bee, formally known as Megachile pluto, was first discovered by English entomologist Alfred Russel Wallace in 1859 and was not observed again until 1981.

Biologists know little about the bee giants except that they have unusually large mandibles to scrape together balls of tree resin and wood to fortify their nests, and that they are relatively solitary animals.

After its last appearance, this “Goliath of bees’’ had remained elusive to scientists despite several expeditions trying to find it.

Before the latest rediscovery, scientists had feared the species was already extinct due to drastic deforestation in its habitat as Indonesia lost 15 per cent of the tree cover between 2001 and 2017, according to Global Forest Watch.

“Amid such a well-documented global decline in insect diversity, it’s wonderful to discover that his iconic species is still hanging on,’’ said Simon Robson, a member of the search team and a biologist at the University of Sydney. (Xinhua/NAN)</s>PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — With an estimated wingspan of two-and-a-half inches, Wallace’s Giant Bee is the world’s largest bee. Despite it’s size, the bee has been lost to science since 1981 … until now.

In January, a search team successfully rediscovered the species, considered the “holy grail” of bees, in the Indonesian islands.

This is the second rediscovery of one of the Global Wildlife Conservation’s “Top 25 Most Wanted Species” in it’s “Search For Lost Species” program.</s>The world’s largest bee has been rediscovered by a team of biologists, more than 160 years after it was first seen on an Indonesian island. Last seen in 1981, Megachile pluto is as long as an adult’s thumb and four times larger than a honey bee.
Scientists announce that the Megachile pluto (Wallace's giant bee), the world's largest bee, has been rediscovered in North Maluku, Indonesia, after no confirmed sightings since 1981. The first ever pictures and videos are taken of the rare species.