A massive big, black wasp-like bee, described as the world’s largest and thought to have gone extinct, has been rediscovered by scientist alive.
Called Wallace’s Giant Bee, also called “Raja ofu,” or king of bees, is making global news headlines and being dubbed a “nightmare bee” due to its size and fearsome appearance, as it is about four times larger than European honeybees.
First discovered in 1858, this giant bee was not seen again until 1981. Since that time, the bee was thought to have gone extinct. Now, nearly four decades later, a living specimen has been spotted.
In 1981, scientists had found several specimens on three Indonesian islands, but they haven’t been seen since.
However, after days of searching and following the same footsteps Wallace took through Indonesia, researchers have now found a single live female which they photographed and filmed. The first photo was taken by natural history photographer Clay Bolt.
The giant bee is about the size of an adult thumb, roughly 4 centimeters (about one and a half inches), and has a wingspan of 6 centimeters (about two and a half inches). Its head alone is nearly the size of a European honeybee.
Another gruesome feature of Wallace’s Giant Bee is its giant and sharply-pointed pincer jaws. The bee’s mandibles are the stuff of nightmares!
The bee, known as Wallace’s Giant Bee (Megachile pluto), was named after its discoverer, British naturalist and explorer Alfred Russell Wallace who co-developed the theory of evolution with Charles Darwin.
Wallace found the massive species and described it in 1858. At the time, Wallace described the be as “a large black wasp-like insect, with immense jaws like a stag-beetle.”
