The World’s Largest Bee and the Cautionary Tale of Its Rediscovery by Oliver Milman Megachile pluto is the world’s largest bee, coming in approximately four times times larger than a European honey bee (composite image). Clay Bolt/ claybolt.com/Re:wild While working as a curatorial assistant at the American Museum of Natural History, Eli Wyman learned about a very unusual bee that was presumed to be extinct. The bee, Megachile pluto , also known as Wallace’s giant bee, is a massive unit. It is the largest bee in the world, four times larger than a honeybee and measuring about the length of a human thumb. Huge mandibles hang like dastardly garden shears from its head. Or, at least, did—the bee hadn’t been seen alive since 1981 and was feared lost. “I just thought ‘someday I’ve got to go to look for this bee.’ It’s a sort of unicorn in the bee world,” Wyman says. “If you love bees, as I do,” he added, “this is the greate...
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