Multimedia Reporting (Kuhr-Musser)

Bees are loved for their honey and feared for their sting. However, KU scientists get a different message from the famous insects.
Matt Doubrava takes a closer look at what the ancient insect has to say.

During the Miocene Epoch, a period lasting from about 5 to 23 million years ago, the earth’s climate was beginning to undergo a cooling process. The Antarctic ice sheet began forming due to the drop in the earth’s temperature. Common mammals like wolves and horses were making their appearance. Apes didn’t just roam Africa, but southern Europe as well. And during all this, honey bees were…well…making honey, as they have for 30 million years.

Today, however, they may be playing a different role.

A recently discovered fossil reveals the largest ancient honey bee to date. It is compared to the modern “giant honey bee,” which is twice the size of the common European honey bee and can grow up to an inch in length. The fossil, which is 19 million years old, was found on the Japanese Iki Island and sent to Michael Engel, an entomology professor and museum curator at the University of Kansas.

The giant honey bee does not currently inhabit that area. The fossil may be a sign of global climate change, an occurrence that alters habitats forcing species to relocate. Therefore, fossils like this could be a window into the past climates of our planet.

Fossil of a "giant honey bee" found in Iki Island, Japan. KU Entomologist Michael Engel interpreted the fossil as being over 19 million years old.

Engel, associate professor of biological sciences at KU, said, “The significance of the fossil is the further support for the paleoclimatology of Japan during the Miocene epoch."

“Giant honey bees once had a wider distribution but are more restricted today because of the contraction of the tropical zone."

The giant honey bee, according to Engel, is entirely tropical. Its habitat today includes southeast Asia, throughout India and Indonesia. However, this fossil was discovered in a temperate zone in Japan. This suggests that the Japan area may have been a more tropical environment 19 million years ago and currently has a much cooler climate.

Ismael Hinojosa-Diaz, a KU graduate student in entomology and bee expert, said that scientists can use fossils like this to determine what kind of environment certain areas had. The study of paleoclimatology is studying climates that existed before human records. Studying the placement of fossils allows scientists to observe ancient climate trends.

“Species that were adapted to the cold took advantage,” Hinojosa-Diaz said of the steady drop in temperature that took place during this period. “Species that needed a tropical environment were contracted into smaller areas.

Diaz said that in order for this bee to have lived in Japan, the temperature and flora of the region had to be much different than it is today. It would have had to be humid, with a tropical jungle landscape.

Unlike the European honey bee, giant honey bees do not build their nests in hollowed-out, decaying places such as tree trunks. Their nests are high in branches in treetops and are completely exposed to the outside.

These nests cannot survive freezing winters. If the giant honey bee lived in Japan 19 million years ago, then ancient Japan could not have had freezing winters. The species would have been pushed towards southeast Asia as the temperatures dropped.

It is external forces like climate change that led and will continue to lead to variations in species. A species that lives in a wide area can get separated from the rest of its kind when the temperature zone contracts. When this happens, the species splits into fragments and begins to reproduce in its own division. Other external factors, like continental drift, would have the same affect on a species.

This natural process, Diaz said, affects bees and every other living thing on the planet. It is the continuing evolution of the earth and the species that inhabit it.