The Bees of the United States project started on February 2018 when the first suite of images (over 900) were released to the ITP Node. Over the months more releases occurred, the most recent in mid-October 2019 (more than 500 images added). The number of available images will continue to grow with more releases planed for the near and far future. The Bees of the USA project is a cooperative initiative between: USDA-APHIS-PPQ Science and Technology + Field Operations- California; the Essig Museum of Entomology of the University of California in Berkeley; The University of Georgia; and Colorado State University. The United States is the richest country in number of species of bees (close to 4,000 species have been described for the United States, California alone has close to 1,600 species). Therefore, the team still has a lot of work ahead to complete the project’s purpose, which is to document and photograph all the bees of the United States. For comments or questions regarding this project, please feel free to contact Dr. Allan Smith-Pardo (allan.h.smith-pardo@usda.gov) or Lindsey Seastone (lindsey.e.seastone@usda.gov).

Organization:USDA APHIS PPQ

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