![]() Photo by Glenn Seplak.īut let’s begin with the bee basics. The species barcodes are published on the Barcode of Life Database. A few hundred of these bees have been identified to species through the collaborative efforts of students from Pima Community College and the University of Arizona and a relatively new tool called DNA barcoding. Desert Museum volunteers have collected, curated, and identified nearly 16,000 bees across the Tucson Basin to genus. True to its name, it’s a collaborative effort between researchers, artists, photographers, students, and community scientists! The first order of bees-ness is to begin identifying native bees. The Tucson Bee Collaborative, a partnership between the Desert Museum, the University of Arizona Insect Collection, and Pima Community College, aims to discover and describe the incredible biodiversity of these precious pollinators through DNA sequencing, high-resolution imaging, and ecological research. The Tucson Bee Collaborative aims to change that. These native bees are specialists at pollinating our native flora, as they’ve had quite a bit of practice over thousands to millions of years! They’re also underappreciated by the broader public, and surprisingly understudied. In the Sonoran Desert region, biologists estimate there to be upwards of 600-700 native species of bees. ![]() Of the approximately 5,000 different species of bees in the United States, around 1,300 live in Arizona, meaning Arizona contains the most diversity of bees in the country, and perhaps the world. But did you know there are over 20,000 species of bees worldwide, and only a few that produce honey? Do you imagine a fuzzy insect with black and yellow stripes, a honeycomb nest, maybe a queen bee? If so, you’re not alone.
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