What's the Buzz?

It seems that bees are much older than we think! The discovery of a 100-million-year-old bee fossil preserved in amber "pushes the bee fossil record back about 35 million years," according to Bryan Danforth, Cornell associate professor of entomology. Before this fossil was found, the oldest bee fossil recorded was a mere 65 million years old. It had been suspected that bees were much older, perhaps even 120 million years old, but there was no physical evidence to support this. 

And guess what! This amber-bee has wasp-like traits, which now suggests that bees and wasps may have some evolutionary link. (And they don't even like each other!)

Also, originally researchers believed that primitive bees were members of the Colletidae family, but Danforth's work indicates that they originated from the family Melittidae.

D-uh! EVERYone knows that, right?

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Find out more about these old bees at: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/12/061209083342.htm