Question: How big are bees in other countries?

John Paterson answered on 21 Jun 2019:

Carpenter bees are a big, shiny bee that you get in a lot of warm countries in the world. You sometimes even get them in the south of England if they have flown over from France or Spain. They are 1 or 2 inches long, so about 2 or 3 times the size of a bumblebee. One really cool one is Xylocopa varipuncta which is big and covered in yellow hair so it looks like a flying teddy bear.

The biggest bee, though, is Wallace’s giant bee. This is named after a famous scientist called Alfred Russel Wallace. They are about 2 inches long but can have wings up to 3 inches long. People thought they were extinct because nobody had seen one for 40 years but then they found one earlier this year. See this article: https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/animals/2019/02/worlds-largest-bee-once-presumed-extinct-filmed-alive-wild

Insects never get absolutely giant because they’re limited by their bodies. They don’t have lungs to breathe like humans do, instead they have little holes in their body and air flows in through them. But air can’t travel very far like this, so insects can never get too big otherwise they couldn’t get air to their body properly.