Earliest pollinating bee

The earliest known pollinating bee is a tiny female specimen belonging to the newly described species Discoscapa apicula found embedded in a lump of c. 100-million-year-old amber in Myanmar, dating to the mid-Cretaceous Period. Not only is it a new species, but it is housed in a new genus and is sole member of an entirely new taxonomic family too. Numerous pollen grains were attached to the bee, showing that it had recently visited one or more flowers. Also in direct contact with it were five minute parasitic beetle larvae called triungulins (plus a further 16 in close association with it), which may have caused the bee to fly accidentally into the resin that, when hardened, became amber, trapping it – and them – for all time.

Most fossilized bees currently known to science are no older than 65 million years, and look very like modern bees, whereas this much older specimen exhibits various notable differences. These include a uniquely bifurcated basal antenna segment, plus several anatomical features nowadays found only in apoid wasps, not in any other bees.

This species was formally described and named by Dr George Poinar from Oregon State University in the scientific journal Palaeodiversity, in an article published on 29 January 2020.