Bees on Every Continent Except Antarctica

How long ago did bees evolve, and what did they evolve from?

Bees evolved from wasps approximately 130 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period. The specific ancestors were predatory wasps from the family Crabronidae, which collected insects and spiders to provision their nests. At some point, a lineage switched from collecting animal prey to collecting pollen — a shift that changed the trajectory of life on Earth.

The evidence comes from fossilised amber inclusions, comparative morphology, and molecular phylogenetics. The oldest confirmed bee fossil, Cretotrigona prisca, is preserved in Burmese amber and dates to around 100 million years ago. It already shows the pollen-collecting body hairs (plumose or branched setae) that distinguish bees from wasps — a physical adaptation for carrying pollen rather than prey.

The switch from predation to pollen collection was not a sudden event. The early lineages were probably partly carnivorous — the larvae may have eaten both pollen and small insects, as some ground-nesting bee species do today. Purely pollen-dependent bees represent a later specialisation.

What drove the switch is not established with certainty, but the most accepted explanation is opportunism: wasps provisioning nests with plant-feeding insects were occasionally depositing pollen incidentally, and over many generations, larvae that survived on pollen alone outcompeted those requiring animal protein. Once pollen collection became efficient, the ecological niche opened entirely.

The timing matters because flowering plants (angiosperms) appeared on Earth around 140–150 million years ago, slightly before bees. The two groups co-evolved in a relationship that became the most consequential plant-animal partnership in terrestrial ecology: plants providing nectar and pollen, bees providing pollination.

Why do bees exist on every continent except Antarctica?

Bees exist wherever flowering plants exist in sufficient diversity and density to support bee populations through the foraging season. Flowering plants now cover virtually every terrestrial landmass on Earth, from tropical rainforests to Arctic tundra margins, which is why bees show up almost everywhere.

Antarctica is the exception because it has no flowering-plant communities suitable to support bee foraging. Antarctica's flora consists almost entirely of two vascular plant species — Antarctic hair grass (Deschampsia antarctica) and Antarctic pearlwort (Colobanthus quitensis) — growing only on the Antarctic Peninsula in the far north of the continent. Neither produces nectar, and neither occurs in enough abundance to support any bee population through a viable season.

The Antarctic climate eliminates the possibility of bees surviving even if flowering plants were present. Bees require a foraging season long enough to gather sufficient resources before winter. Antarctica's summer is short, cold, and unpredictable; overwintering in any form bees use — hibernation for queen bumblebees, winter cluster for honey bee colonies — is not viable in Antarctic conditions.

This makes the "every continent except Antarctica" statement accurate in practical terms, though somewhat misleading in detail. Parts of Greenland, northern Canada, and Siberia have very low bee diversity despite technically hosting flowering plants — the conditions are marginal, and bee populations there are limited to a handful of cold-adapted species rather than the rich communities found in temperate zones. Antarctica is the only place where the bar to entry is simply insurmountable.

How many bee species are there globally, and how many live in Britain?

Over 20,000 bee species have been formally described globally, though the total number including undescribed species may be somewhat higher. This figure covers enormous variety in size, behaviour, and ecology — from the tiny Perdita minima (about 2mm long) in North America to the Megachile pluto, a Southeast Asian leafcutter bee with a 38mm wingspan.

Britain has 270 bee species. This is a relatively modest total compared to the megadiverse tropics, but it is significant for a cool, maritime, island nation. British bee species include 24 bumblebee species, one honey bee species (Apis mellifera), and approximately 245 species of solitary bees — mining bees, mason bees, leafcutter bees, and their relatives.

The 270 figure masks range differences. Several British bee species are abundant and widespread — the buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) and the red-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius) occur across England, Scotland, and Wales. Others are genuinely rare and geographically restricted: the shrill carder bee (Bombus sylvarum) survives in only a handful of sites in England and Wales, and several solitary mining bee species are known from single locations.

Three of Britain's bumblebee species became extinct in the twentieth century due to habitat loss. Bombus cullumanus and Bombus subterraneus are regionally extinct in the UK, though the Short-haired bumblebee (Bombus subterraneus) is being reintroduced from Swedish populations to sites in Kent and the Romney Marsh area.

Out of 20,000 bee species, how many actually produce honey?

Only seven species produce honey in the quantities humans have exploited for food: the seven species within the genus Apis — the true honey bees. The most widespread is Apis mellifera, the western honey bee. Others include Apis cerana (the Asian honey bee), Apis dorsata (the giant honey bee of South and Southeast Asia), Apis florea (the dwarf honey bee), and three further species from Southeast Asian rainforests.

These seven species produce surplus honey — storing more than the colony needs for immediate use — because they are perennial, eusocial colonies that overwinter and therefore need large reserves. Storing surplus honey is not an inherent bee behaviour; it is a strategy specific to colonies that survive winter as a group and need to sustain thousands of workers through months without forage.

Most of the 20,000+ other bee species make honey in the technical sense — they convert nectar into concentrated sugar using enzymes — but they make it in quantities too small for human harvest. Bumblebee colonies store only a few grams at any one time. Solitary bees store liquid provisions for individual larvae, not surplus for the colony.

Stingless bees (Meliponini), a tribe of tropical bees with roughly 500 species across the Americas, Africa, and Australia, produce harvestable honey in small quantities. Meliponiculture — the management of stingless bees for honey — has a long history in Mesoamerica and is practised across the tropics. The honey is liquid, very acidic, and highly prized locally, though quantities per hive are far smaller than Apis honey production.

Britain's only honey-producing bee species managed commercially is Apis mellifera.

Is the honey bee (Apis mellifera) native to Britain and Europe?

Apis mellifera is native to Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Britain and Ireland are within the species' natural European range, making the honey bee a native British insect — though the particular subspecies' history in Britain is somewhat complicated by the island's geography and human management.

The European subspecies most associated with Britain and northern Europe is Apis mellifera mellifera, the Northern European or Dark bee. This subspecies evolved in northern and western Europe over thousands of years following the retreat of the last glacial maximum, adapting to cool, wet, maritime climates with short foraging seasons — exactly the conditions found in Britain. It is darker in colour than Mediterranean subspecies, tends to be more defensive, and builds up colony numbers more slowly in spring.

Apis mellifera is not native to the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, or East Asia. All honey bee populations in these regions descend from introduced stock. The Americas had no Apis bees before European colonisation — North and South American wild bees are entirely solitary or bumblebee species, plus the stingless meliponines.