Native bees: US species, nests and how to help them

Native bees in the US: about 4,000 species, 70% nesting in the ground. How to identify them, which are endangered under the ESA and how to help them at home.

Native bees are the bees that lived in North America before Europeans arrived, and the United States has about 4,000 species of them, according to the US Geological Survey. They range from bumble bees and carpenter bees to sweat bees smaller than a grain of rice. Most are solitary, make no honey and nest in the ground. They pollinate wild plants and many crops, and several are now listed as endangered.

The honey bee, Apis mellifera, is not one of them: it was imported from Europe in the 17th century. It is the bee most Americans picture, but it shares every yard, farm and prairie with dozens to hundreds of native species. This guide explains how to recognize them, how they live, why many are in trouble and what really helps them.

How many native bee species live in the United States?

About 4,000 species, many still unnamed

The USGS gives a figure of about 4,000 native bee species in the United States, out of more than 20,000 known worldwide, and estimates that around 10% of US species have not yet been named or described. The smallest, Perdita minima, is about 0.08 in (2 mm) long. The USGS Bee Lab, based at the Patuxent Research Refuge in Laurel, Maryland, is the only group in the Department of the Interior with the expertise to identify native bees to species. It develops identification keys and survey methods, checks other researchers’ identifications and publishes thousands of free, high-resolution bee photos.

Diversity is high almost everywhere. The Bee Lab notes that at least 100 bee species may be found within a mile of any yard, urban or rural, and state counts run into the hundreds:

Area	Bee species	Source
World	over 20,000	USGS
United States, native species	about 4,000	USGS
United States, bumble bees	about 45	Xerces Society and USDA National Agroforestry Center
New York	about 450	Cornell University
Pennsylvania	over 400	Penn State Extension
Within a mile of a yard	at least 100	USGS Bee Lab

The richest bee faunas are in the arid West and Southwest, where deserts and desert grasslands support a great variety of ground-nesting, flower-specialist bees. Cornell cautions that even its New York figure is likely incomplete, since no full statewide survey of wild bees has ever been done there.

Six families of bees

Bees are a lineage of wasps whose larvae eat pollen and nectar instead of prey. US species belong to six families:

Family	Typical US genera	What to look for
Andrenidae	Andrena (mining bees), Perdita	many spring species, pollen on hind legs, ground nesters
Halictidae	Halictus, Lasioglossum, Agapostemon (sweat bees), Sphecodes	small to medium, some metallic green, mostly ground nesters
Colletidae	Colletes (cellophane bees), Hylaeus (yellow-faced bees)	cells lined with a waterproof, cellophane-like film
Melittidae	Macropis, Hesperapis	few species, often plant specialists
Megachilidae	Osmia (mason bees), Megachile (leafcutter bees), Anthidium	pollen carried on hairs under the abdomen
Apidae	Bombus, Xylocopa, Ceratina, Melissodes, Nomada, Apis	the most varied family: bumble bees, carpenter bees, long-horned bees, cuckoo bees, honey bee

Penn State Extension counts more than 100 sweat bee species in Pennsylvania alone, which makes Halictidae one of the families you are most likely to meet in a garden.

How are native bees different from honey bees?

People often talk about “bees” as if they were all honey bees. The real difference is the way of life. A honey bee colony is perennial and holds tens of thousands of workers. Bumble bee colonies are far smaller and die each fall, and more than 90% of bee species, Penn State notes, are solitary. For the inner workings of a honey bee hive, see our guide to the honey bee colony.

Feature	Honey bee	Bumble bees	Solitary native bees
Origin	introduced from Europe, 17th century	native	native (with a few introduced species)
Social life	perennial colony, one queen, tens of thousands of workers	annual colony of a few dozen to a few hundred	each female builds and stocks her own nest
Winter	the whole colony, in a cluster	only mated new queens, underground	usually as larva, pupa or adult in the nest
Honey	large stores	small amounts of nectar in wax pots	none
Foraging range	several miles	a few hundred yards to a mile or two	often a few hundred yards
Active season	most of the year	early spring to fall	often just a few weeks per species
Diet	generalist	generalist	generalist or specialist

Generalists and specialists

Many native bees visit a wide range of flowers. Others are pollen specialists. The USGS estimates that 20% to 45% of native bees rely on a single plant species or genus for pollen. Squash bees collect pollen almost only from squashes, pumpkins and gourds; other bees specialize on sunflowers, asters, willows or evening primroses. A specialist disappears when its host plant does, which makes these bees especially sensitive to habitat loss.

Native bees also matter to farmers. The USGS points out that they are the main pollinators of many crops or substantially supplement honey bees, and that even crops that can self-pollinate, such as cotton, soybeans and peppers, yield more when bees visit them. Penn State lists apples, pears, nuts, strawberries, tomatoes, peppers, blueberries, squash and melons among the crops wild bees pollinate.

How do you identify common native bees?

Naming a native bee to species often takes a microscope and a specialist key, which is exactly what the USGS Bee Lab produces. The main groups, however, can be told apart by eye.

Bumble bees (Bombus)

Large, round and very hairy, banded in yellow, black, white, orange or red. In early spring a queen that has overwintered alone starts a nest, often in an old rodent burrow. Workers appear first, then males and new queens; in fall the colony dies and only mated queens survive the winter. Bumble bees fly in cool, cloudy weather and “buzz pollinate” tomatoes, peppers and blueberries by vibrating their flight muscles. The common eastern bumble bee is the one most people in the East and Midwest see; the West has its own set of species.

Carpenter bees (Xylocopa and Ceratina)

The eastern carpenter bee, Xylocopa virginica, looks like a bumble bee but has a shiny, almost hairless black abdomen. Females chew round tunnels into soft, bare wood, which is why they turn up in decks and eaves. Males, recognizable by a pale patch on the face, hover and dart at anything that comes near the nest but cannot sting. The small carpenter bees, Ceratina, are tiny, dark, often metallic blue bees that nest in the pith of broken stems such as raspberry and sumac.

Mason bees (Osmia)

The blue orchard bee, Osmia lignaria, is a metallic blue-black native bee a little smaller than a honey bee. It flies in early spring, nests in existing holes and walls each cell with mud. It is managed commercially for orchard pollination, and Penn State notes that mason bees in general are prized for pollinating orchard crops in spring. A related species from Asia, the Japanese orchard bee, Osmia cornifrons, is a non-native species introduced for the same purpose.

Mining bees (Andrena)

Andrena is among the largest bee genera in North America. Mining bees are mostly honey bee sized or smaller, dark or reddish, and fly mainly in spring on willows, red maple, fruit blossom and dandelions. Females dig burrows in lawns, banks and bare patches, sometimes hundreds side by side, each marked by a small mound of soil.

Sweat bees (Halictidae)

Small to medium bees, named because some species lick salty sweat from skin. The metallic green sweat bees, such as Agapostemon, are the most striking: bright emerald from head to thorax. Many Lasioglossum species are tiny and dark. Most nest in the ground, and some live in small social groups.

Leafcutter bees (Megachile)

Leafcutter bees cut neat circles from the leaves of roses, redbud and other plants to line their nest cells, leaving tidy half-moon notches but doing no real harm. The alfalfa leafcutting bee, Megachile rotundata, was introduced from Eurasia in the late 1930s. According to the USDA Agricultural Research Service lab in Logan, Utah, it is now a major managed pollinator of alfalfa seed, released at 40,000 to 60,000 bees per acre, with growers often buying bees from Canadian suppliers. The wool carder bee, Anthidium manicatum, introduced from Europe, is another non-native member of this family now common in gardens.

Long-horned bees and squash bees

Male long-horned bees (Melissodes and relatives) have antennae nearly as long as their bodies. They are common on sunflowers, coneflowers and asters in summer. Squash bees fly at dawn, when squash flowers open, and nest in the ground, often right beside the crop.

Cuckoo bees

A large share of bees are cleptoparasites. Cornell estimates that about 23% of New York’s bees are cuckoos: they collect no pollen and lay their eggs in other bees’ nests. Cuckoo bees such as Nomada, Sphecodes and Coelioxys are sparsely haired, often red, yellow and black, and easily mistaken for wasps. Their presence is a sign of healthy host populations.

Where do native bees nest?

According to the Xerces Society and the USDA National Agroforestry Center, about 70% of native bee species dig their nests underground. About 30% are solitary wood or cavity nesters, and the social bumble bees, about 45 species in the US, nest in existing cavities such as rodent burrows. Penn State gives the same split for Pennsylvania, and Cornell estimates that about 54% of New York’s bees are diggers.

Nest type	Share	Examples	What they need
Ground burrows	about 70%	mining bees, sweat bees, cellophane bees, squash bees, long-horned bees	bare or thinly covered, well-drained soil in the sun
Tunnels in wood or stems	about 30%	mason bees, leafcutter bees, carpenter bees, small carpenter bees, yellow-faced bees	dead wood, beetle holes, pithy or hollow stems
Existing cavities	bumble bees	bumble bees	old rodent burrows, tussocks, leaf litter, sheds

In almost every solitary species the female builds a cell, packs it with pollen moistened with nectar, lays one egg, seals the cell and starts another. She dies within weeks and never meets her offspring, which emerge the following year.

A native bee year, region by region

The United States spans many climates, so the timing shifts a lot. Treat these as rough guides.

Region	Early season	Peak	Late season
Northeast and Midwest	March and April: bumble bee queens, mining bees on willow and red maple, blue orchard bees	May to July: sweat bees, leafcutters, long-horned bees, bumble bee workers	August to October: bumble bee queens and males on goldenrod and asters, late sweat bees
South and Southeast	February: carpenter bees and early mining bees	March to June	fall bloom keeps bumble bees and sweat bees active into November
California lowlands	January and February: mason bees and mining bees with early blossom	March to May, the main wildflower season	summer-dry months favor specialists of late-blooming plants
Arid Southwest	spring wildflowers after winter rain	many species fly after summer monsoon rains	fall, with sunflowers and other composites

Are native bees declining?

Where the losses are

The broadest national estimate comes from a study led by Insu Koh of the University of Vermont, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in December 2015. The team modeled wild bee abundance across the country from land use data and expert assessments of habitat quality. It found that wild bees likely declined between 2008 and 2013 in areas covering 23% of the United States, largely where natural habitat was converted to intensive agriculture. It also identified 139 key counties, making up 39% of the country’s pollinator-dependent cropland, where demand for pollination is rising as wild bee supply falls.

The USGS attributes most native bee decline to the loss of plant diversity. For individual species, the clearest evidence is the growing list of bees protected under the Endangered Species Act:

Species	Range	ESA status
Seven Hawaiian yellow-faced bees (Hylaeus)	Hawaiian Islands	endangered, effective October 31, 2016: the first bees listed
Rusty patched bumble bee (Bombus affinis)	East and upper Midwest	endangered, listed in 2017
Franklin’s bumble bee (Bombus franklini)	southwest Oregon and northern California	endangered, final rule August 2021
Suckley’s cuckoo bumble bee (Bombus suckleyi)	West	proposed as endangered, December 2024; no final rule found as of October 2026

The rusty patched bumble bee

The rusty patched bumble bee was once widespread from the eastern United States and upper Midwest into southern Ontario and Quebec, south to northeast Georgia and west to the eastern Dakotas. It was listed as federally endangered in 2017. Since 2000 it has been reported from only 13 states (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin) and one Canadian province.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service says the exact cause of the decline is unknown, but evidence points to the combined effect of an introduced pathogen and exposure to insecticides and fungicides, on top of habitat loss, competition from non-native and managed bees, climate change and the problems of small populations. The bee lives in prairies, woodlands, marshes, farmland, parks and gardens. Its nests are typically 1 to 4 ft (0.3 to 1.2 m) underground in old rodent burrows, and it needs flowers from spring to fall close to undisturbed nesting and overwintering sites.

To recognize it: workers and males carry a rusty reddish patch at the front of the second abdominal segment, the head is entirely black, and the thorax is mostly yellow with a black spot or band between the wings. Queens lack the rusty patch. Workers are about 0.35 to 0.6 in (9 to 16 mm) long, queens 0.75 to 0.9 in (19 to 23 mm).

Franklin’s bumble bee

Franklin’s bumble bee has the smallest range of any North American bumble bee, roughly 13,000 square miles in southwest Oregon and northern California, and possibly the smallest of any bumble bee in the world. It has not been seen since 2006. The Fish and Wildlife Service cited disease, small population size and pesticides when it listed the species in August 2021.

Do honey bees compete with native bees?

Honey bees are not the enemy of native bees, and many beekeepers plant generously for pollinators. But a strong colony gathers large amounts of nectar and pollen over several miles, and where many hives are concentrated on limited flowers, less remains for everything else. The Fish and Wildlife Service lists non-native and managed bees among the stressors on the rusty patched bumble bee.

What the research says

The best overview is a systematic review by Rachel Mallinger, Hannah Gaines-Day and Claudio Gratton of the University of Wisconsin-Madison (PLoS ONE, 2017). Of the studies on competition, 53% found negative effects of managed bees on wild bees, 28% found no effect and 19% found mixed effects. For disease, 70% reported possible negative effects, since managed bees can carry pathogens that spill over to wild bees through shared flowers.

The evidence is solid that competition occurs where hives are dense and flowers scarce. It is much weaker on whether that competition actually reduces native bee reproduction and populations, which few studies have measured. A couple of backyard hives in a flower-rich suburb are unlikely to cause measurable harm. The concern is greater for large apiaries placed in natural areas with rare or specialist bees, especially in arid landscapes where flowers are limited.

What a beekeeper can do

Match colony numbers to the forage around you. Adding hives does not add flowers. Our guide on where to put a beehive explains how to judge the forage around a site.
Avoid placing hives in sensitive natural areas, such as preserves and sites known for rare bees, unless the land manager approves.
Plant for bees to increase the food supply rather than split it more thinly.
Keep colonies healthy, since pathogen spillover from managed bees is part of the concern.
Check your state’s rules before keeping bees: requirements differ, and your state department of agriculture or extension service can tell you what applies. Our guide on how to start beekeeping covers the basics.

Are bee hotels worth it?

The bee hotel has become a symbol of helping pollinators. It can be useful, but it is never a substitute for real habitat.

What a bee hotel does

A well-made nest block attracts mostly mason bees, leafcutter bees and some solitary wasps, and lets you watch females sealing tunnels with mud or leaf pieces. It is a good teaching tool and helps orchard growers who manage blue orchard bees.

Its limits

It serves only a minority. About 70% of native bees nest in the ground and will never use one.
It concentrates parasites and disease. Hundreds of nests packed together attract parasitic wasps, cuckoo bees, mites and mold. An uncleaned hotel can become a sink rather than a refuge.
It often helps the wrong species. In Toronto, Scott MacIvor and Laurence Packer (PLoS ONE, 2015) followed about 600 bee hotels for three years. Native solitary wasps occupied almost three-quarters of them each year, introduced bees made up about a quarter of the more than 27,000 bees and wasps recorded, and native bees were more heavily parasitized than introduced ones.
It is useless without flowers within a few hundred yards.

Getting it right

The Xerces Society’s guidance for the USDA National Agroforestry Center gives the specifications below for drilled nest blocks; the last two rows are general good practice.

Element	Recommendation
Hole diameter	a range from 3/32 in (3 mm) to 5/16 in (9 mm), to suit different species
Wood	dry, sound wood, not rotting or waterlogged; in stumps or standing dead wood, angle holes slightly upward to shed water
Position	morning sun, protected from rain and midday heat, holes facing south where possible
Height	at least 4 ft (1.2 m) above the ground
Size	several small blocks rather than one large hotel
Upkeep	use paper liners or replaceable tubes and swap them every year or two to limit parasites

How can you help native bees at home?

The most effective steps are simple, cheap and often involve doing less.

Plant native flowers that bloom from early spring to late fall, with varied flower shapes. Penn State recommends a mix of native species with staggered bloom times. Our guide to plants for bees suggests species by season.
Leave bare ground. A sunny patch of bare, well-drained soil is the single most useful nesting site you can offer. Xerces advises avoiding tilling where possible, since it destroys ground nests.
Leave the leaves and the stems. In its September 2026 “Leave the Leaves” guidance, the Xerces Society recommends raking leaves into beds rather than shredding them, leaving perennial stems standing over winter for stem-nesting bees such as small carpenter bees, and waiting until late spring before cleaning up.
Keep dead wood. Stack fallen branches and logs, and leave a snag or stump in the sun if it is safe.
Cut back on pesticides. Penn State advises choosing the least harmful products when chemicals are necessary, never treating plants in bloom, spraying in the evening and preventing drift. Herbicides and fungicides can harm bees too.
Let the lawn flower. Clover, self-heal and dandelions in the lawn feed bees; mow less often and higher.
Use state programs. In Minnesota, the Lawns to Legumes program, started in 2019 with the rusty patched bumble bee as its flagship species, has reimbursed residents up to $400 for pollinator plantings during signup periods. The individual grants were not open for applications in October 2026, so check the Board of Water and Soil Resources site for the next round. Other states run their own programs; ask your state department of natural resources or your land-grant university extension service.
Join a Bee City or Bee Campus. The Xerces Society’s Bee City USA program had 469 affiliates at the end of 2025, 251 cities and 218 campuses, which reported 6,611 pollinator habitat projects covering 3,705 acres.
Report what you see. Photos uploaded to Bumble Bee Watch, BeeSpotter or iNaturalist help scientists track rare species such as the rusty patched bumble bee.

If you keep honey bees, all of this helps your colonies too. Diverse, abundant forage is the foundation of strong colonies, as our page on the honey bee life cycle explains. Invasive insects add new pressures: the yellow-legged hornet, detected in Georgia in 2023, preys on honey bees and other insects, and any suspected sighting should be reported to state officials.

Who protects native bees in the United States?

There is no single national wild bee plan; responsibility is shared between federal agencies, states, universities and nonprofits.

US Fish and Wildlife Service. Lists threatened and endangered bees under the Endangered Species Act, writes recovery plans and works with landowners on habitat. Its staff work alongside the USGS Bee Lab at Patuxent.
US Geological Survey. The USGS Bee Lab develops identification tools and monitoring methods, works with partners in every state and verifies identifications for researchers.
USDA Agricultural Research Service. The Pollinating Insect-Biology, Management, Systematics Research Unit in Logan, Utah, studies managed native and non-native bees such as the alfalfa leafcutting bee and blue orchard bee, which growers use alongside honey bees.
States. Many states have pollinator protection plans or habitat programs, and some, like Minnesota, fund pollinator plantings directly. Rules and programs vary by state, so check with your state department of agriculture or natural resources.
Land-grant universities. Extension services such as Penn State’s and Cornell’s publish state bee lists, identification guides and planting advice tailored to local conditions.
The Xerces Society. The leading nonprofit for invertebrate conservation, it runs Bee City USA, co-manages Bumble Bee Watch and publishes habitat guidelines for farms, parks and gardens.

With about 4,000 species, around a tenth of them still unnamed, there is a great deal left to learn about America’s native bees. Every flowering yard, field edge and roadside gives them a better chance in the meantime.

Frequently asked questions

How many native bee species are there in the United States?

The US Geological Survey puts the figure at about 4,000 native bee species, and estimates that around 10% of them have not yet been formally named. Individual states hold hundreds: Penn State Extension counts over 400 wild bee species in Pennsylvania, and Cornell estimates about 450 in New York. The honey bee is not among them: it was brought from Europe in the 17th century.

Are honey bees native to North America?

No. According to the USGS, honey bees were imported from Europe in the 17th century. North America already had its own bees, about 4,000 species in the United States alone, which pollinated native plants long before European settlers arrived. Honey bees are now essential to agriculture, but in ecological terms they are a managed, introduced species living alongside the native fauna.

Do native bees sting?

Only females can sting, and most native solitary bees rarely do: they have no colony or honey to defend, and many small species cannot pierce human skin. Bumble bees will sting if you squeeze them or disturb their nest. Male bees cannot sting at all, including the male eastern carpenter bees that hover aggressively in front of people near their nesting wood in spring.

What are the small holes and mounds of dirt in my lawn in spring?

They are often the nests of ground-nesting bees such as mining bees, which fly in early spring. Each little mound of soil with a hole in the center marks a female's burrow. These bees are gentle, the nests do the lawn no harm, and activity stops within a few weeks. Penn State and the Xerces Society both note that about 70% of bee species nest in the ground.

Are bee hotels good for native bees?

They help a minority of species, mainly mason bees and leafcutter bees that nest in tunnels. Most native bees nest in the ground and will never use one. Studies in Toronto found bee hotels were often taken over by wasps and introduced bees, and parasites build up in crowded nests. A small block with clean, replaceable tubes, plus flowers and bare soil nearby, works best.

Which US bees are on the endangered species list?

Seven Hawaiian yellow-faced bees became the first bees listed as endangered, in a rule effective October 31, 2016. The rusty patched bumble bee followed in 2017 and Franklin's bumble bee, not seen since 2006, in 2021. In December 2024 the US Fish and Wildlife Service proposed listing Suckley's cuckoo bumble bee as endangered. Check the Service's species pages for the latest status.

What should I do if I think I saw a rusty patched bumble bee?

Take clear photos from the top, the side and of the head, then upload them to Bumble Bee Watch, BeeSpotter or iNaturalist so experts can confirm the identification. Workers and males have a rusty reddish patch on the second segment of the abdomen; queens lack it. The US Fish and Wildlife Service uses these records to track where the endangered bee survives.

Do carpenter bees damage houses?

Eastern carpenter bees bore round tunnels about half an inch wide into bare, soft wood such as untreated decks, fascia boards and fence rails. One season's tunnels do little harm, but nests reused for years can weaken wood and attract woodpeckers. Painting or staining exposed wood discourages them. They are important pollinators, and the males that buzz around you cannot sting.

Sources

What is the role of native bees in the United States?, US Geological Survey
Are honey bees native to North America?, US Geological Survey
USGS Bee Lab at the Eastern Ecological Science Center, US Geological Survey
NY Bee Diversity, Cornell University, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
Conserving Wild Bees in Pennsylvania, Penn State Extension
Enhancing Nest Sites for Native Bee Crop Pollinators (Agroforestry Note, 2007), M. Vaughan and S. Hoffman Black, Xerces Society, for the USDA National Agroforestry Center
Leave the Leaves! (September 2026), Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation
Alfalfa Leafcutting Bee (ALCB), USDA Agricultural Research Service, Pollinating Insect-Biology, Management, Systematics Research Unit, Logan, Utah
Rusty Patched Bumble Bee (Bombus affinis), US Fish and Wildlife Service
Service Lists Franklin's Bumble Bee as Endangered under Endangered Species Act (August 23, 2021), US Fish and Wildlife Service
Endangered Status for 49 Species From the Hawaiian Islands (81 FR, September 30, 2016), US Fish and Wildlife Service, Federal Register
Endangered Species Status for Suckley's Cuckoo Bumble Bee (proposed rule, 89 FR 102074, December 17, 2024), US Fish and Wildlife Service
Wild bee decline threatens US crop production (on Koh et al., PNAS, December 2015), University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources
Lawns to Legumes fact sheet (Fall 2024), Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources
Lawns to Legumes: apply for assistance, Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources
Seeds of Change: Bee City USA and Bee Campus USA 2025 Annual Report, Bee City USA, Xerces Society
Do managed bees have negative effects on wild bees? A systematic review of the literature (PLoS ONE, 2017), R. E. Mallinger, H. R. Gaines-Day and C. Gratton, University of Wisconsin-Madison
'Bee hotels' as tools for native pollinator conservation: a premature verdict? (PLoS ONE, 2015), J. S. MacIvor and L. Packer