Hum

A field guide to native bees

North America

Rusty patched bumble bee

Small neighbors.
A world to discover.

Meet the native bees sharing our yards, balconies and schoolyards.

Meet this bee
Follow the pollen ↓

Look a little closer

Native, not new

Not just honey bees.

From tiny sweat bees to large bumble bees, North America is home to about 4,000 native species.

Honey bees are not native to the Americas. European colonists brought them in the 1600s.

4,000 Native bee species in North America.
20,000+ Bee species around the world.

Small bee. Big work.

One in three.

About one in three bites of food depends on pollinators.

USDA

There’s more to the buzz

Feel the frequency

Buzz.

Bumble bees grab a flower and vibrate their flight muscles to shake pollen loose.

Tomatoes, peppers, blueberries and cranberries pollinate best this way. Honey bees cannot do it.

The flight controls are loading.

Where bees live

Make room for home

Room below.

70% Nest in the ground
30% Nest in stems and wood

About 70% of native bee species nest in the ground; most of the rest nest in hollow stems or holes in wood.

A tidy yard with no bare soil and no old stems has nowhere for them to live.

Not every bee has a hive

Leave a little wild.

Most native bees are solitary: each female builds and stocks her own nest.

A hollow stem. A hole in wood. A patch of undisturbed ground. Small spaces make a home.

Bumble bees are different. They live in colonies.

Meet one of them

Rusty patched bumble bee · Bombus affinis

Rusty.

Look for the patch.

Workers and males have a rusty reddish patch on the back of the abdomen.

Take a closer look as she turns.

The flight controls are loading.

Bombus affinis

A future worth protecting

A familiar bee. An uncertain future.

2017 Listed as endangered · January

Once common across the eastern United States, the upper Midwest and southern Ontario and Quebec.

In January 2017 it became the first bumble bee in the United States listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act.

  • Habitat loss
  • Pesticides
  • Disease and pathogens
  • Climate change
US Fish and Wildlife Service

A colony begins again

One queen. A new beginning.

Colonies start each spring from a single queen that spent the winter underground.

They need flowers from early spring to fall.

Plant for the whole season

Another native neighbor

The spring specialist

Blue orchard bee

A metallic dark blue female blue orchard bee, seen from the front.

Osmia lignaria

A mason bee: metallic dark blue, a little smaller than a honey bee. Active in early spring, when fruit trees bloom.

A nest sealed with mud.

Nests in existing holes in wood and stems. The female builds a row of cells, each with pollen and one egg, and seals them with mud.

Made for the orchard.

Farmers use it to pollinate almond, apple and cherry orchards.

It carries pollen dry on the hairs under its abdomen, so pollen falls easily onto the next flower.

Another native neighbor

Up before the honey bees

Squash bee

A female squash bee with pale golden hairs, seen from the front.

Eucera pruinosa

Long known as Peponapis pruinosa.

A specialist: it collects pollen only from squash, pumpkin and gourd flowers.

The dawn shift.

It starts foraging at dawn, before honey bees, while the flowers are open in the cool morning.

Males often spend the night inside the closed squash flowers.

Home beneath the patch.

Females nest in the ground, often right under the squash plants. Deep tilling can destroy the nests.

Make room for bees

Plant a patch

A patch starts here.

Spring

  • Willows
  • Golden alexanders
  • Wild geranium
Native flowers for the eastern and central US.

Keep the patch blooming

Let it hum.

Summer

  • Bee balm
  • Purple coneflower
  • Mountain mint
Eastern and central US.

Through the last flowers

Keep the flowers coming.

Fall

  • Goldenrod
  • Asters
Eastern and central US. Your patch checklist

Your bee-friendly patch

A little less tidy. A lot more life.

Small things you can do. Tick them as you go.

Saved on this device.

A note on bee hotels

A home, not a hotel.

Tube nests must be cleaned or replaced every year, or they spread disease.

Stems and bare soil are simpler.

Back to the ground

A little room for wild

Less tidying. More possibility.

Leave some leaves.

Leave some leaves and wood in a corner.

Grab a leaf. Let it fall. You can also focus a leaf and use the arrow keys to move it.

Sightings · North America

Who’s nearby?

Recent bee sightings, mapped.

Every point shows a species, a date and a place. Explore by bee group and month.

Live iNaturalist research-grade observations.

Live observations load as you reach the map.

North America

Select a point to see its species, date and place.

About Hum

For the bees. For everyone.

Hum is a free public guide.
It sells nothing.

A guide to the native bees of North America, and how to help them in a yard, a balcony or a schoolyard.

Rooted in public knowledge

  • US Fish and Wildlife ServiceRusty patched bumble bee
  • USDA Forest ServiceNative bees
  • Xerces SocietyHabitat guidance
  • GBIF & iNaturalistSightings