The environmental organisation Natuurpunt announced on Monday that they discovered a new bee species in 2022. Observed for the first time in Belgium, another species which was previously thought to be extinct in the country was also rediscovered.
Volunteers from the research section of Natuurpunt on bees and wasps Aculeau are to thank for the discovery, the organisation said.
The first discovery came in January 2022, when international sand bee expert Thomas Wood checked some of the specimens collected by the volunteers. One of the discovered species was the Andrena assimilis, which had already been observed in the Flemish municipality of Meise but could not be identified.
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The second finding came on 2 July in the German-speaking municipality of Büllingen, when an hoplitis villosa bee was discovered, having been last observed in 1974.
Nonetheless, Natuurpunt highlighted that Belgium's bee population had suffered greatly from the floods that shook the country in July 2021.
