Author: Jeremy Rehm / Source: Science News for Students
Everything about Wallace’s giant bee is, er, giant. The bee’s body is around 4 centimeters (1.
6 inches) long — about the size of a walnut. Its wings spread to more than 7.5 centimeters. (2.9 inches) — almost as wide as a credit card. A bee that big would be hard to miss. But it’s been nearly 40 years since the world’s largest bee (Megachile pluto) was spotted in the wild. Now, after two straight weeks of searching, scientists have found the bee again, still buzzing through the forests of Indonesia.Eli Wyman wanted to go on a bee hunt. He’s an entomologist — someone who studies insects — at Princeton University in New Jersey. He and a colleague made the hunt as part of a project led by Global Wildlife Conservation. That’s an organization in Austin, Texas, that tries to help species that are about to die out forever.
Global Wildlife Conservation gave scientists money for expeditions to find 25 species that were feared to be gone forever. But first the organization had to choose which 25 species would be hunted. Scientists from around the world suggested more than 1,200 possible species. Wyman and photographer Clay Bolt nominated Wallace’s giant bee. Despite the competition, the bee won out as one of the top 25.
Into the jungle
Wyman, Bolt and two other scientists set off to Indonesia on a bee hunt in January 2019 for a two-week excursion. They headed to forests on two of only three islands where the bee had ever been found.
Female Wallace’s giant bees call termite nests home. The bees use their formidable jaws to burrow into the nests. Then the insects line their tunnels with resin to ward off their termite landlords. To find the giant bee, Wyman and his team hiked through the oppressive jungle heat and stopped at every termite nest they saw on the trunk of a tree. At each stop, the scientists halted for 20 minutes, searching for a…
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