Paleontologists have announced the discovery of a new fossil honeybee species that fills a long-standing gap in the evolutionary record of the genus Apis.
Apis aibai. Image credit: Y. Takahashi & J-ichi Takahashi, doi: 10.3897/zookeys.1255.162389.
Fossil honeybees are exceedingly rare, and most known specimens come from Oligocene and Miocene deposits in Europe and China, tens of millions of years old.
Only a handful of younger fossils, from the Pleistocene and Holocene, have been found, and those belong to still-living species.
The new Japanese fossil bee, named Apis aibai, falls squarely between these two clusters, making it both the youngest known extinct honeybee and the oldest confirmed fossil of the subgenus Apis — the group that includes the Western honeybee (Apis mellifera) and its closest relatives.
“The honey bee, a general term for hymenopteran insects of the genus Apis (family Apidae), plays a vital role as a pollinator for both natural and agricultural ecosystems,” said Dr. Yui Takahashi from Keio Yochisha Elementary School and Dr. Jun-ichi Takahashi of Kyoto Sangyo University.
“In addition, these insects maintain some of the closest ties to human society.”
“There are at least nine existing honey bee species and three subgenera (Micrapis, Megapis and Apis) from the genus Apis.”
“The native range of Apis mellifera covers Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and western China, whereas the other eight congeners are primarily found in Asia.”
“The distributions of the eight Asian species overlap in the tropical and subtropical zones of South and Southeast Asia, whereas only the range of Apis cerana extends northward to the temperate zone.”
“The fossil record of Apis is disproportionately derived from Eocene-Miocene deposits in Europe and China, with only a few exceptions from the Pleistocene age.”
The holotype of Apis aibai was recovered from the Teragi Group, a sequence of volcanic and lake-deposited rock layers in Japan’s Hyogo prefecture.
Preserved in whitish, tuff-rich siltstone, the specimen shows a worker bee roughly 10 mm long, with wings, hind legs and body segments clear enough to allow detailed comparison with living honeybee species.
The fossil dates back between 2.8 and 2.2 million years ago (Late Pliocene-Early Pleistocene).
Based on wing vein patterns and leg structure, the authors argue that the fossil bears a strong resemblance to Apis nigrocincta, a honeybee species found today only in the Philippines and Indonesia.
“This suggests that the Apis nigrocincta-related extinct group, including the new species, historically had a wider distribution, ranging to temperate Japan of the Late Pliocene-Early Pleistocene age,” the researchers said.
“An interesting hypothesis is that the Apis nigrocincta-related extinct group may be the ancestral bees of Apis cerana, which is the only native honey bee species in Japan.”
The discovery also lends physical evidence to genetic estimates, based on mitochondrial DNA, suggesting the Apis subgenus arose sometime in the Late Miocene epoch.
Until now, no fossils had confirmed the group’s presence before the Pleistocene.
“Thus, Apis aibai contributes to bridging the gap between fossil studies and genomic estimations,” the scientists concluded.
Their paper was published online in the journal ZooKeys.
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Y. Takahashi & J-ichi Takahashi. 2025. A honey bee fossil (Hymenoptera, Apidae) from the Late Pliocene to Early Pleistocene Teragi Group, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan: Bridging a gap in Apis evolutionary history. ZooKeys 1255: 291-301; doi: 10.3897/zookeys.1255.162389
