![]() ![]() This was facilitated by the warming climate around the same time, allowing bees to move to higher latitudes following the spread of tropical and subtropical habitats. įollowing the K-Pg extinction, surviving bee lineages continued to spread into the Northern Hemisphere, colonizing Europe from Africa by the Paleocene, and then spreading east to Asia. The North American fossil taxon Cretotrigona belongs to a group that is no longer found in North America, suggesting that many bee lineages went extinct during the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event. Later in the Cretaceous (80 million years ago), colletid bees colonized Australia from South America (with an offshoot lineage evolving into the Stenotritidae), and by the end of the Cretaceous, South American bees had also colonized North America. The rapid radiation of the South American bee families is thought to have followed the concurrent radiation of flowering plants in the same region. Further divergences were facilitated by West Gondwana's breakup around 100 million years ago, leading to a deep Africa-South America split within both the Apidae and Megachilidae, the isolation of the Melittidae in Africa, and the origins of the Colletidae, Andrenidae and Halictidae in South America. The Melittidae, Apidae, and Megachilidae had already evolved on the supercontinent prior to its fragmentation. Genomic analysis indicates that despite only appearing much later in the fossil record, all modern bee families had already diverged from one another by the end of the Cretaceous. The supercontinent is thought to have been a largely xeric environment at this time modern bee diversity hotspots are also in xeric and seasonal temperate environments, suggesting strong niche conservatism among bees ever since their origins. This same evolutionary scenario may have occurred within the vespoid wasps, where the pollen wasps evolved from predatory ancestors.īased on phylogenetic analysis, bees are thought to have originated during the Early Cretaceous (about 124 million years ago) on the supercontinent of West Gondwana, just prior to its breakup into South America and Africa. The switch from insect prey to pollen may have resulted from the consumption of prey insects which were flower visitors and were partially covered with pollen when they were fed to the wasp larvae. The immediate ancestors of bees were stinging wasps in the family Crabronidae, which were predators of other insects. In Mesoamerica, the Mayans have practiced large-scale intensive meliponiculture since pre-Columbian times. Bees have appeared in mythology and folklore, through all phases of art and literature from ancient times to the present day, although primarily focused in the Northern Hemisphere where beekeeping is far more common. Human beekeeping or apiculture (meliponiculture for stingless bees) has been practised for millennia, since at least the times of Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece. The analysis of 353 wild bee and hoverfly species across Britain from 1980 to 2013 found the insects have been lost from a quarter of the places they inhabited in 1980. Vertebrate predators of bees include primates and birds such as bee-eaters insect predators include beewolves and dragonflies.īee pollination is important both ecologically and commercially, and the decline in wild bees has increased the value of pollination by commercially managed hives of honey bees. ![]() Most pollen is used as food for their larvae. Bees range in size from tiny stingless bee species, whose workers are less than 2 millimetres (0.08 in) long, to Megachile pluto, the largest species of leafcutter bee, whose females can attain a length of 39 millimetres (1.54 in).īees feed on nectar and pollen, the former primarily as an energy source and the latter primarily for protein and other nutrients. The most common bees in the Northern Hemisphere are the Halictidae, or sweat bees, but they are small and often mistaken for wasps or flies. Some species – including honey bees, bumblebees, and stingless bees – live socially in colonies while most species (>90%) – including mason bees, carpenter bees, leafcutter bees, and sweat bees – are solitary.īees are found on every continent except Antarctica, in every habitat on the planet that contains insect-pollinated flowering plants. There are over 20,000 known species of bees in seven recognized biological families. They are currently considered a clade, called Anthophila. Bees are a monophyletic lineage within the superfamily Apoidea. ![]() Bees are winged insects closely related to wasps and ants, known for their roles in pollination and, in the case of the best-known bee species, the western honey bee, for producing honey.
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