More than two dozen new and rare bee species were documented during the first year of a new Washington state project that’s designed to get a better understanding of the insects.
The Washington State Department of Agriculture is seeking new bee collection volunteers as its Bee Atlas initiative enters its second year.
“We’re already learning fascinating things about our native bees, and we’re only getting started,” said Karen Wright, pollinator taxonomist for the WSDA. “But we still need more help. Washington is a large state and there are some counties where we don’t have a single volunteer. We’d love to have more people trained and out there looking for and recording our native bees.”
The Washington Bee Atlas is modeled after the Oregon Bee Atlas, which began in 2019 as part of the broader Pacific Northwest Bumble Bee Atlas. That program began in 2018 and monitors bumblebee activity in Oregon, Washington and Idaho.
Washington remains part of the Pacific Northwest Bumble Bee Atlas, but launched the Washington Bee Atlas in July 2023 as part of an effort to better understand Washington’s native bees, identify which are doing well and which may need conservation support.
The Washington Bee Atlas also documents which plants native bees depend on, with the goal of developing recommendations for seed mixes to support pollinators.
All of the latest bee data from Washington will be added to the Ecdysis research data portal, with plans for more ways to make the data usable by the public under discussion.
The WSDA began training program volunteers in 2023.
Most bee collecting is done by volunteers trained to collect and pin museum-quality specimens and record the location and host plant where the bee was collected. The volunteers then submit the pinned specimens to Wright for identification. Eventually, all specimens not used for education and outreach will reside in the Washington State University entomology museum.
Aside from being over 18, there are no prerequisites for new volunteers, as the program provides the necessary training.
In 2024, 67 Washington Bee Atlas volunteers collected over 17,000 specimens on more than 600 host plants.
The project has identified at least 26 new or rare species in the state, with many of the collected bees yet to be identified.
The WSDA said there have already been several remarkable discoveries, including 15 species never collected in the state before, a bee found in Yakima County that had not been recorded in Washington since 1917, and another bee found in Yakima and Pierce counties that had not previously been found in Western Washington.
Many of these bees were detected in Central Washington, likely because most native bees have adapted to thrive in dry areas like the microclimates found east of the Cascade Mountains, according to the WSDA.
Ten of the 26 new or rare bee species that have been identified so far were collected in Chelan County.
Eight of those bee species collected in Chelan County were discovered as part of a graduate research project conducted by a University of Washington student and a Washington Bee Atlas volunteer.
A total of eight new or rare bee species were collected in Grant County, five in Yakima County, four in Kittitas County, two in Okanogan County, and one each in Douglas, Thurston, Clark, Pierce and Benton counties.
Some bee species were collected in more than one county.
“These are just our preliminary findings,” Wright said. “There are still many more bees to identify from what has been collected, not to mention lots of opportunities to find new or rare species.”
Washington State Standard is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
