A Big Discovery: Insect researcher finds world's largest bee in Indonesia

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There is a lot of buzz around the discovery of a previously thought to be extinct insect. A bee, but, not just any bee. The world's largest bee has been discovered by a team of researchers in a remote part of Indonesia. CGTN's Greg Navarro has more.

Glen Chilton is a man who likes to find things. As a biologist now living in Townsville, he's focussed much of his research on finding species that were thought to be extinct.

GLEN CHILTON PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF BIOLOGY, SAINT MARY'S UNIVERSITY "I had been looking at all sorts of rediscovered species travelling the world but lurking in the back of my mind was that giant bee, the biggest bee in the world."

Wallace's Giant Bee is the largest known bee on the planet. It's only been documented twice, the last time in the 1980's, and thought to be extinct. But Chilton wasn't convinced.

GLEN CHILTON PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF BIOLOGY, SAINT MARY'S UNIVERSITY "It finally came to the point where a colleague of mine who studies bees said, yeah, I'd like to go to that remote corner of Indonesia, that ridiculously poor corner of Indonesia ravaged by disease - let's go and see if we can find it and so in February of last year that's what we did."

Chilton organised a team and after 4 days of searching, they came upon this, a single female living in a tree, and truly living up to its world's largest bee title.

GLEN CHILTON PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF BIOLOGY, SAINT MARY'S UNIVERSITY "Elation. When you work that hard on something or a couple of years hoping that it is going to happen, not knowing whether the bee still existed, not knowing whether the forest where the bee lived in still existed, to hear that all of those pieces are still in place - that's glorious."

GREG NAVARRO TOWNSVILLE "When you think about all of the previously thought to be extinct species including plants that might generate interest, you probably wouldn't expect a been to top any lists."

If you did, you'd be wrong because Chilton says just one day after news of the discovery was released, it had about 1.8 billion hits on Google.

GLEN CHILTON PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF BIOLOGY, SAINT MARY'S UNIVERSITY "One point 8 billion with a 'B' hits, we knocked Donald Trump out of position number one that day."

While some people might rest on the laurels of one historic discovery, Chilton is not done yet. And organising those searches and expeditions in the future might be a bit easier for the man who not only yearns to find things, but does. Greg Navarro, CGTN, Townsville.