First all-American honeybee.

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North America did too have a native honeybee. A roughly 14-million-yearold 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 fossil (left) shows the somewhat jumbled parts of a honeybee, recognizable in part by its distinctive pattern of wing veins (arrow). The Americas have plenty of other kinds of bees, but all previously known honeybees come from Asia or 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 from Germany, A. armbrusteri. Engel and his colleagues christen the new honeybee Apis nearctica in the current, May 7, issue of Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences.