By Victoria Bell For Mailonline
Published: 15:19 GMT, 21 February 2019 | Updated: 17:59 GMT, 21 February 2019
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The world's biggest bee has been found after it was thought that the species had become extinct as there has not been a sighting since 1981.
Known as Wallace's giant bee - which is as long as an adult's thumb - the creature was found on a little-explored Indonesian island.
Wildlife experts found the single live female living inside a termites' nest in a tree, more than two metres off the ground.
The goliath is four times bigger than a European honeybee and unlike its cousin, the solitary creature does not live in a nest with hundreds of other bees.
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The world's biggest bee has been found after it was thought that the species had become extinct as the last time a specimen was spotted was in 1981. Known as Wallace's giant bee - which is as long as an adult's thumb - was found on a little-explored Indonesian island
Clay Bolt, a wildlife photographer, was the first to see the insect, which is named after the British naturalist and explorer Alfred Russel Wallace.
Wallace first discovered it in 1858 and described the female bee as 'a large, black wasp-like insect, with immense jaws like a stag beetle'.
'It was absolutely breathtaking to see this 'flying bulldog' of an insect that we weren't sure existed anymore, to have real proof right there in front of us in the wild,' said Mr Bolt.
'To actually see how beautiful and big the species is in life, to hear the sound of its giant wings thrumming as it flew past my head, was just incredible. '
Wildlife experts found the single live female living inside a termites' nest in a tree, more than two metres off the ground. The goliath is four times bigger than a European honeybee and unlike its cousin, it does not live in a nest with hundreds of other bees
Despite its size, almost nothing known was known about the female’s secretive life cycle apart from that it lives largely
