"North America did too have a native honeybee.

A roughly 14-million-year-old fossil unearthed in Nevada preserves what’s
clearly a member of the honeybee, or *Apis*, genus, says Michael Engel of
the University of Kansas in Lawrence.

The Americas have plenty of other kinds of bees, but all previously known
honeybees come from Asia and Europe. Even the *Apis mellifera* honeybee that
has pollinated crops and made honey across the Americas for several
centuries arrived with European colonists some 400 years ago.

“This rewrites the history of honeybee evolution,” Engel says, turning over
the long-held view of Europe and Asia as the native land of all honeybees.

The newly discovered bee, found squashed and preserved in shale, no longer
exists as a living species, Engel says. To a specialist’s eye, it looks
closest to another extinct honeybee, *A.* *armbrusteri*, known from Germany.

Engel and his colleagues christen the new North American honeybee *Apis
nearctica *in the current, May 7, issue of *Proceedings of the California
Academy of Sciences*.

“It is indeed a big find,” says David Grimaldi of the American Museum of
Natural History in New York City. “Completely unexpected,” he says,
considering all of the Eurasian fossils."

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/45857/title/Fossil_shows_first_all-American_honeybee

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