NPR

World's Largest Bee Is Spotted For First Time In Decades

The bee towers over its apian cousins. Females have been recorded as being at least an inch and a half long. Add to that a pair of gigantic mandibles, and it's a bee like no other.
One of the first images of a living Wallace's giant bee was captured after a recent rediscovery of the world's largest bee in Indonesia. As this composite image illustrates, the bee is approximately four times larger than a European honeybee.

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 — — towers over European honey bees. The female's size has been recorded as at least an inch and a half long,

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