Rare Australian bee rediscovered after nearly a century

An extremely rare species of bee that hasn't been seen for nearly a century and was thought to be extinct has been rediscovered by a lone researcher in Australia. This rare "masked" bee, known as Pharohylaeus lactiferus, is native to Australia and is the only species in the genus Pharohylaeus. It is similar in size to the invasive European honeybee (Apis mellifera). Only six individuals have been previously identified in Australia and the last one was reported in 1923. But the bee was recently rediscovered by James Dorey, a doctoral candidate at Flinders University, while completing fieldwork in the state of Queensland. After the chance rediscovery, Dorey conducted a larger survey of Queensland and New South Wales dedicated to searching for P. lactiferus. "I never really expected to find any," Dorey told Live Science. "But we have caught many times more bees now than we did back then."...MORE