Honey Liquid Gold Of The Ancient World
In Greek mythology, Melissa was a nymph who discovered and taught the use of honey and from whom bees were believed to have received their name. Regarded as nectar of the gods, honey is obviously as old as the bee and the oldest bee ever discovered was found embedded in amber in a mine in northern Myanmar (Burma) dating back 100-million-years.
Two New Halictine Bees entombed in Miocene Amber from the Dominican Republic (Hymenoptera, Halticidae). ZooKeys 29: 1–12. (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Ancient African Bees
More than 16,000 species of bees currently exist in seven major family groups, and bees pollinate plants causing them to evolve, but until recently researchers had generally believed that most primitive bees stemmed from the family Colletidae, which implies that bees originated in the either South America or Australia. However, a 2006 paper by Dr B. Danforth in Science concludes that the earliest branches of the bee's evolutionary tree originate from the family Melittidae, meaning bees have African origins, and furthermore, because bees are almost as old as flowering plants, bees are used to explain the evolutionary diversification of these plants.
