The European Honey Bee (Apis mellifera) arrived in the Americas aboard European ships around 1622. In a way this was a homecoming, America had regained her long lost honey bees. It has always been assumed that honey bees are not native to North America until a recent discovery found a single fossil of a native North American honey bee in the Stewart Valley basin in west-central Nevada. The 14 million year old fossil was a female worker of the extinct honey bee (Apis nearctica) that lived in North America during the middle Miocene epoch and was found in a paper shale deposit along with other insects of the period. The fossil record proved honey bees lived in North America but for how long? And when did they go extinct? These questions remain unanswered.
Read full article here: Native North American Honey Bees? — Native Beeology
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