Ancient Japanese Honeybee Fossil Bridges Two-Million-Year Gap

A 2.8–2.2 million-year-old fossil honeybee from Hyogo, Japan, named Apis aibai, is the youngest known extinct honeybee and the oldest fossil in the Apis subgenus, bridging gaps between the fossil record and genomic dates; its wing and leg morphology closely matches the living Apis nigrocincta, implying a broader ancient distribution and possibly ancestral ties to Apis cerana; the find supports timing estimates for the subgenus’s origin and was published in ZooKeys.