Wallace's Giant Bee
The world's largest bee: lost for 38 years and found in a termite mound
No confirmed photograph exists
Location
North Maluku Islands, Indonesia
Overview
Wallace's giant bee is, by a wide margin, the world's largest bee. The female reaches 3.8 cm in length with a 6.3 cm wingspan and carries jaws like a stag beetle. It was discovered in 1858 by Alfred Russel Wallace — co-discoverer of evolution by natural selection — who called it 'a large black wasp-like insect with immense jaws.' It was then not seen again for 120 years. In 1981, entomologist Adam Messer found living specimens in the North Maluku Islands, observed them nesting in arboreal termite mounds, and collected specimens — but never published. His notes were found after his death. Then the bee vanished again for another 38 years, until a team from Global Wildlife Conservation rediscovered it in January 2019.
Why haven't we found it?
The bee nests inside active termite mounds high in forest trees — not a place people look. Its entire lifecycle happens out of sight in dense lowland forest on islands that see almost no scientific fieldwork. The bee was not hiding; researchers simply weren't looking in the right places with enough effort.
How it was found
- 1
The 2019 rediscovery confirmed at least one viable population on at least one island. The survey team found a female in her nest within days of beginning their search.
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Local hunters in North Maluku reported knowing of the bee — again, it was not 'lost' to people who lived there.
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The islands where it was rediscovered still have large areas of intact lowland forest, though logging pressure is increasing.
Things worth knowing
- 1
The female's enormous jaws are not for defence or feeding — they are used to scrape sticky tree resin, which she carries back to her termite-mound nest to reinforce the nest walls and seal the entrance against the termites.
- 2
Males are much smaller than females and were not described until Messer's 1981 observations. Wallace's original specimen was a female.
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The 1981 Messer specimens were sold to private collectors. When the species was rediscovered in 2019, one specimen appeared at auction online for $9,100 — a fact that alarmed conservationists, as it creates a black market incentive.
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After the 2019 rediscovery was publicised, the discovery team deliberately withheld the precise location of the nest to prevent collection.
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Alfred Russel Wallace collected his specimen on the island of Bacan, which he reached during the same Southeast Asian voyage that produced the insight for his theory of natural selection — this bee was found the same year he sent his famous letter to Darwin.