34 Million Years

So, 34 million years seems like a long time... It's pretty amazing to be working around insects that have been doing what they do for so long.

From Wikipedia:

Honey bees represent only a small fraction of the approximately 20,000 known species of bees. Some other types of related bees produce and store honey, but only members of the genus Apis are true honey bees.

The first Apis bees appear in the fossil record at the Eocene-Oligocene (around 34 million years ago) boundary, in European deposits The origin of these prehistoric honey bees does not necessarily indicate that Europe is where the genus originated, only that it occurred there at that time. There are few known fossil deposits in the suspected region of honey bee origin, and fewer still have been thoroughly studied. There is only one fossil species documented from the New World, Apis nearctica, known from a single 14-million-year old specimen from Nevada.

Honey bees represent only a small fraction of the approximately 20,000 known species of bees.

A Brief History of Beekeeping (interesting reading)

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