Wallace's giant bee

How to recognise it

Enormous and unmistakable: females reach 38 mm with a wingspan around 63 mm, black with a broad white band across the front of the abdomen, and huge forward-projecting mandibles used to gather resin. Males are considerably smaller, at around 23 mm.

• Four times the mass of a honey bee — there is no realistic confusion once seen.
• Enormous stag-beetle-like mandibles in the female.
• A white band across the front of an otherwise black abdomen.
• Found only in the North Moluccas of Indonesia, inside arboreal termite nests.

Body length 23–39 mm (typically 32 mm).

Biology

Social organisation

Solitary

Each female builds and provisions her own nest with no workers and no caste. Most of the world's bee species.

Nesting

Resin-lined cavities; Existing cavities and tubes

Nests inside active arboreal termite nests — a remarkable choice, since the termites are a constant threat. The female excavates a chamber and lines it thoroughly with tree resin gathered in her mandibles, building resin walls that the termites cannot breach. She then provisions cells within her own resin-walled fortress inside somebody else's nest.

Carries pollen

Scopa on the underside of the abdomen

On the wing

January to December

Poorly documented. The handful of records cluster in the drier months, but the sample is far too small to generalise from.

Lifecycle

1. 1Resin collectionThe female gathers large loads of sticky tree resin in her mandibles, holding it against her head, and flies it back to the termite nest — the mandibles are sized for this task rather than for defence.
2. 2Nest construction and provisioningShe builds resin-lined chambers within the termite nest and provisions each with pollen and nectar.
3. 3DevelopmentLarvae develop within the sealed resin cells, protected from the termites by the lining. Very little of the life cycle has been observed directly.

Where it lives and what it does

Habitat

Lowland primary and secondary tropical forest in the North Moluccas, wherever arboreal termite nests occur.

Distribution

Known only from the Indonesian islands of Bacan, Halmahera and Tidore in the North Moluccas. Its total known range is very small.

Behaviour

Almost unknown. Everything on this record derives from a handful of encounters across a century and a half — Wallace's original specimen in 1858, Adam Messer's rediscovery in 1981, and a single female found and photographed alive in 2019. There is no population estimate, no life-history study and no monitoring.

Pollination role

Unknown in any detail. As a very large megachilid it presumably pollinates forest plants effectively, but no study has established which ones or how much it matters.

Genuinely not known. Recorded as unknown rather than estimated, because an estimate here would be invention.

What it forages on

Not established. The few observations suggest it visits forest trees, and nothing more specific can honestly be said.

Honey

Produces no honey

None. Solitary, with provisions sized per cell.

Relationship with people

How people interact with it

Almost none, and what exists is troubling. Following the 2019 photographs, specimens have appeared on online auction sites at high prices, and collector demand for the world's largest bee is now a plausible threat to a species nobody has ever counted. It is not currently protected under CITES, and Indonesian law offers limited coverage.

Conservation

Listed as Vulnerable by the IUCN, on very thin data. The pressures are habitat loss — the North Moluccan lowland forest is being cleared for agriculture and mining — and, since 2019, collection for the specimen trade. A species known from a handful of individuals over 160 years has no margin for either.