This guide is written, photographed, and maintained by Nick Dorian and Max McCarthy. It is free to use. No part of this guide may be reproduced without permission of the authors.

Nick Dorian Ph.D. is a postdoctoral researcher at Chicago Botanic Garden. He completed his Ph.D. in Biology at Tufts University where he studied the population ecology of cellophane bees. Nick is also a passionate environmental educator and public speaker. He co-founded Tufts Pollinator Initiative to engage local communities in urban pollinator conservation and delivered a Tedx talk “We’re saving the wrong bees.”

Max McCarthy is a Ph.D. student at Rutgers University, where he studies populations of the rare Parnassia Mining Bee and the pollination ecology of their host plant, Parnassia.

Together, Nick and Max teach an annual course at Eagle Hill Institute titled “Natural History of Wild Bees.”

Credits

Range maps and phenology bar charts were created using Program R v. 4.1.2 using the ggplot2 package. Occurrence data were accessed through SCAN in January 2023.

If you use this guide to design a research study, please 1) always verify your identifications with voucher specimens and 2) cite this website to build interest in our work. Please do not use our guide to identify entire communities of bees.

All photographs were taken by Nick Dorian or Max McCarthy unless otherwise specified.