Want to learn how to identify native bees? Sign up for our five-day Natural History of Native Bees Course! Improve your field and microscope identification skills, hone your observation skills, and network with other pollinator enthusiasts.

Natural History of Wild Bees

Our 2025 course has filled up! (04-9-25)

We (Nick and Max) are happy to announce the return of our week-long seminar on bee ID at Eagle Hill Institute in Steuben, Maine. The course will run from Sunday June 22rd to Saturday June 28th, 2025. We will be joined again by our amazing TAs Kyle Rossner and Dr. Rachael Bonoan.

We structure our course around field identification of wild bees, with a focus on bumble bees, and linking our identifications back to characters on pinned specimens. Throughout the week, we will learn skills such as field identification to genus, voucher specimen collection, nest searching, photography, and journaling. Afternoon lab work will reinforce identification through microscopy.

This seminar will be of interest to academic students, citizen scientists, naturalists, landscape designers, and managers of public and private lands, among others. We are particularly interested in bringing early-career students to this course, and there are tuition and lodging discounts available for student attendees. 

Registration details: https://www.eaglehill.us/programs/sems-weeklong/calendar-weeklong.shtml.

If the timing or location of our course does not work for you, there are a number of others courses across the United States to help you with bee identification

The Bee Course

The Bee Course is a ten-day workshop held at the Southwestern Research Station in Portal, Arizona. The course is designed to train students in bee identification and systematics, bee biology and ecology, and faunistics and faunal survey work. The course focuses on wild bees (not honeybees) and we accept applications from people with an academic, land-management, policy, or conservation background. For more information how to apply, a list of this year’s instructors, and course testimonials from previous offerings, please visit www.thebeecourse.org.

Midwest Bee Genus Identification Workshop

The University of Minnesota Bee Lab and Minnesota Department of Natural Resources are hosting a Midwest bee genus identification workshop. This five day workshop will be held at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities from March 4-8, 2024 and taught by Dr. Zach Portman. The goals of the course are to:

• Be able to identify midwestern bees to genus and a select few to species
• Learn about helpful resources and keys for bee identification
• Basic understanding of bee classification, nomenclature, general bee morphology, and proper bee specimen curation 

For 2024 registration please visit, this link.

Oregon Native Bee School

The Oregon Bee Atlas offers intermediate (bumble bee to species and other bees to genus) and advanced (species keys) five-day native bee survey and identification course for bees native to western United States at Oregon State University in Corvallis. For more information about 2024 course registration, please visit this link.