WOW! World's largest bee, missing for 38 years, found in Indonesia https://www.aussiebee.com.au/aussiebeeonline004.pdf https://videos.dailymail.co.uk/video/mol/2019/02/21/5327095552121026879/1024x576_MP4_5327095552121026879.mp4 Hope that she is not the last of her species. Also hope that Indonesia will enact---and enforce---legal protection of this amazing insect!
The idea of finding Wallace’s giant bee was given fresh hope when researchers found a specimen in a Dutch museum that had been collected in 1991, and two more dead specimens went up for sale on eBay. ...Knowledge of the bee’s existence lit up a murky corner of the internet that specializes in the trade of rare animals. Shortly after he got back to the U.S., Wyman saw that someone was trying to sell a specimen of the bee on eBay for a few thousand dollars — a tempting lure for the subsistence farmers and fishermen of North Maluku who could get a portion of this relative fortune. Lost and found: how two dead giant bees on eBay sparked the hunt to find one alive The Parable of the World's Largest Bee “The opportunity to be one of the few people who have observed a rare, unique and charismatic animal in its native habitat is a special privilege,” says Wyman. “Finding Megachile pluto also confirms officially that this truly singular and threatened species still holds on to its tenuous niche, and gives us the opportunity to make sure the world knows it exists and that it’s worth protecting.”
