Beekeeping Today Podcast - Presented by Betterbee
April 1, 2020

Bonus Episode: New Giant Honey Bee Discovery

In this bonus episode, Jeff and Kim talk about the just announced discovery of a new race of honey bees, uncovered in the Solomon Islands, Apis gigantica-nordquist, on the smallest uninhabited island, Vangunu. Vangunu, the smallest, uninhabited speck...

In this bonus episode, Jeff and Kim talk about the just announced discovery of a new race of honey bees, uncovered in the Solomon Islands, Apis gigantica-nordquist, on the smallest uninhabited island, Vangunu.

Vangunu, the smallest, uninhabited speck of land in the Solomon Islands is the home to one of the largest rats in the world. But it turns out it is also the home to the largest honey bee species in the world. When loggers felled a tree on Vangunu late last year, a large honey bee colony came down with it. A typical honey bee is the size of a paperclip. These honey bees are about the size of a tube of lipstick or roughly three times the size of Apis Mellifera.

Listen today on the first day of April about this latest discovery in 2020, a year that will go down in history as one of the weirdest and wildest, ever.