The Origin of Bees

Scientists believe that bees evolved from hunting wasps over 125 million years ago, about the same time when flowering plants appeared. These plants needed pollinators and thus began the symbiotic relationship between flower and bee. The wasp hunts insects like flies, caterpillars and spiders to feed their young but at some point in their evolution, some wasps started consuming pollen and nectar, perhaps when they were on a flower consuming prey. Over time these wasps increasingly relied on the pollen and nectar and eventually evolved into today’s bees.

The oldest known bee fossil is a 3mm male embedded in amber from Myanmar that has been dated at ~100 million years old. Before that, there was a bee fossil found in amber from New Jersey dated at ~80 million old which at this time began the rise and rise of angiosperms, plants that produce flowers and bear their seeds in fruits. Today there are over 300,000 species and represent about 80% of all known living green plants.

In New Zealand, there was a recent discovery of a 14.6 million year old bee fossil discovered in mudstone near Outram in Otago, marking the first bee fossil found in Zealandia (the submerged continent that includes New Zealand). They named it Leioproctus barrydonovani, after the well known NZ entomologist, the late Barry Donovan (1941-2022). The ancient insect belongs to Leioproctus, a large genius within the plasterer bee family Colletidae.