Origin of the Bee
The humble bee probably started its journey towards our hearts and our gardens, producing honey for our toast and pollinating our flowers, from a little further away from home than you may think. If you had to guess the ‘birthplace’ of the black and yellow insects, where would you suggest? My mind leans towards Europe, being the area in which much of the species’ domestication in recent history took place. Or maybe you think of the expansive Africa region, as to suit the deadly and aptly named African killer bees that inhabit the region. Or further away, in the new world? After all, the black bears and grizzly bears of North America love finding a hive, right?
Ok, so it obviously isn’t one of them, as to appropriately set up the location as a surprise, so I hope you didn’t guess this… South and South-east Asia! This may be the original location that the honey bee really blossomed and began its leap in evolution. But how do people know this? Where did the idea come from? And how did the honey bee travel the world to be such an important member of almost every ecosystem around the populated world.
Well the proof is in the ground, palaeontologists (scientists specialised in examining and studying fossils) have found that most species of honey bee, both living and extinct, can be found in fossil form in that region of the world. In fact, all of the worlds extant honey bees are native to this area, prior to their great journey across the globe.
The ground holds more than just one clue, looking at the geographic layout of the continents, the bee saw opportunity to travel away from its home, for example northwards into the rest of Asia, pathing the way for a relationship with the northern populations of humans, hence China being a leading producer of honey (2014). Elsewhere, the ancestors of our 2018 bees also travelled further west, across the great Asian continent, down into India, Africa and further across into Europe. From here, with the development of western Europe and their city ports, connections were made completely around the world. This allowed for Western travellers to go out in chase of very precious and rare foreign things to bring home, the world was their oyster. Actually, they might have literally bought oysters back.
We’ll all heard of when pioneers bought the potato home from South America, maize, tomatoes, bananas, it was endless, we were able to get foods and plants that we had never heard of before. Wonderful flowers and their seeds were also sought after, rare and beautiful species that we wanted for ourselves. But of course, with all these plants and flowers being loaded onto their ships, alongside also came the insects that rely on them including our focus for today, the honey bee, probably still with pollen on its legs.
Somehow, incredibly throughout all this change, the honey bees still managed to maintain their detailed eusocial structure of workers, drones and queen bees, or their excellent comb building and hive living, but that’s best saved for another day.
Footnote
The driving idea behind this one, lied in our group name.
Yep for some reason we, the team behind Wildlife OP Blog go by the name ‘The bees’ and the actual story of our origin will definitely be talked about. Either here, or on our forthcoming podcast! Link coming soon. Thank you