Calliopsis scitula, or the charming miner bee, had never been documented in Washington. Anthidium formosum, a species of wool-carder bee, hadn’t been recorded in the state since 1882.
Now they can be found in the new Washington Bee Atlas, thanks to hundreds of volunteer citizen scientists who are on a mission to find and log native bees throughout the state and during all seasons. The goal is to create a baseline, to answer a question: “How are our native pollinators doing?”
So said Karla Salp, spokesperson for the Washington State Department of Agriculture, which oversees the project in partnership with Oregon State University and Washington State University.
“There’s never been a statewide effort to even find what we have,” Salp said, “let alone how they’re doing.”
The goal includes finding what host plants the native bees are using, she added. That way, plant lists and seed mix recommendations can be developed for specific regions.
The information is needed for scientific research, conservation efforts and agriculture, which depends on pollination by commercial honeybees. But relying on honeybees, which were brought to the U.S. from Europe in the 17th century and aren’t native, is precarious for the food supply as honeybees face challenges that now include Varroa mites, which have been deemed a serious threat to honeybee colonies globally.
So supporting native bees could help ensure that crops can be pollinated if honeybee populations decline precipitously.
But first, the native bees — believed to number at least 600 different species in the state — must be found. They can be as large as bumblebees but many are small, like millimeters long. Small enough for people to mistake them for gnats.
“They can be very tiny,” Salp said.
And they don’t necessarily prefer the same plants.
“As the flowers turn over throughout the season, the bees turn over throughout the season,” Salp said.
The program was launched in 2023.
Volunteers’ findings from 2023-2025 included nearly 30 new or rare bee species in the state, according to the state Department of Agriculture.
Seventeen species were new, meaning they were the first known records of the bees in Washington.
Another 12 species hadn’t been documented in the state for at least 50 years, one of which was Anthidium formosum, last recorded 144 years ago, but found recently in Douglas and Grant counties.
Salp has contributed her own skills to the state’s bee atlas, including the small bit of sampling she did in her yard near Port Angeles in less than two months.
“Twenty species from a couple months in my own yard. That just kind of floored me,” she said, adding that has helped spur her curiosity and increased her participation in the project.
Blaine resident Megan Asche, an entomologist, collects bees for the Washington Bee Atlas.
She said volunteers can contribute as much, or as little, time as they want to the effort. Even though doing “bug stuff” is her full-time job, she participates because “I enjoy traveling, collecting insects on the weekend because I’m a nerd, and that gives me permission to do that for this program.”
Asche said the program is a good way to meet like-minded people who are interested in conservation, learning more about the state, the environment and bees. It’s inclusive. It’s fun. People can gather bees themselves, or go out into the field for group outings.
There are lots of opportunities to volunteer all across Washington state, both on the west side and on the east side, Asche said.
And while the program has a growing number of volunteers, Salp said more are needed from northwestern Washington including Mount Vernon, Bellingham and the Blaine area.
Volunteers sign up online. Winter is an ideal time to do so as they can spend those months in online training sessions put together by Oregon State University, before they go out into the field to collect specimens of bees. Oregon, like Washington, is part of a network of states that have created bee atlases.
What would-be volunteers need to know, according to Salp, is the project involves lethal collection, meaning the bees must be caught and killed. That’s because they can’t be identified to the species using photos, Salp explained. They need to be examined under a microscope, and some may require DNA testing or to have their internal organs examined to differentiate them from one another.
“Understandably, there are people that do not want to do that, which is totally fine,” Salp said of lethal collections. “If that’s the case, the Washington Native Bee Society is a really great organization to join if you’re still interested in learning more and supporting bees, maybe helping with outreach events, that type of thing.”
For more about the Washington Bee Atlas, including how to volunteer, go to https://bit.ly/3V5ZUfE.
