WATCH: World's largest bee rediscovered after nearly four decades

A team of researchers rediscovered a single female Wallace’s giant bee on the Indonesian islands of North Moluccas

Biologists in Indonesia have discovered a single female Wallace’s giant bee that was feared extinct for the past 38 years.

The world’s largest bee, measures as long as an adult human thumb, has fearsome jaws of a stag beetle and is four times larger than our domestic honey bee, according to The Guardian.

A team of researchers rediscovered the bee (Megachile pluto) living inside a termites’ nest in a tree on the Indonesian islands of North Moluccas.

“It was absolutely breathtaking to see this ‘flying bulldog’ of an insect that we weren’t sure existed any more,” said Clay Bolt, a specialist photographer who obtained the first images of the species alive. “To actually see how beautiful and big the species is in life, to hear the sound of its giant wings thrumming as it flew past my head, was just incredible.”



The giant bee was first known to science in 1858 when the famous British explorer and naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace discovered it on the tropical Indonesian island of Bacan. He described the female bee as “a large, black wasp-like insect, with immense jaws like a stag beetle”.

Despite its size, almost nothing is known about the rare bee's secretive life cycle, with their female’s known to make nests inside termite mounds high up in the tree canopy.

The giant bee’s habitat is endangered due to intensive deforestation and commercial agriculture with its giant size and rarity contributing to its decline as the rare bee's as a prized collector's item.

Currently, there is no legal protection addressing trade in the endangered Wallace’s giant bee.

BREAKING: Lost to science since 1981 and thought by some to be extinct, Wallace's giant bee (Megachile pluto) has been rediscovered in Indonesia by an international team of scientists and conservationists. pic.twitter.com/VoDp43LRG2

— Australian Academy of Science (@Science_Academy) February 21, 2019

This article originally appeared in The Guardian