\u201cSome are extremely tiny. I’m talking about three or four millimeters maybe,\u201d said Salp, whose day job is serving as spokesperson for the agriculture department. \u201cPeople might see these things flying around and think that they’re gnats, and they’re actually bees that are out there pollinating.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Taxonomists are still working through the 50,000 specimens that volunteers turned in. So far, they have identified 30 new-to-Washington species and 14 species that had not been reported in the state in half a century or more.<\/p>\n One small species called the white-banded sweat bee (Lasioglossum leucozonium) had not been documented in Washington since 1906\u2014until a volunteer near Ephrata turned it up.<\/p>\n A species of wool-carder bee (a group of bee species that build their tiny nests with plant hairs) was last documented in the state in 1882. Volunteers in three Central Washington counties netted specimens of it for the bee atlas. The species, Anthidium formosum, is rare enough that it has no common name.<\/p>\n According to agriculture officials, the state\u2019s food security depends on its native bees.<\/p>\n \u201cReliance on honeybees alone puts food supplies in a precarious position,\u201d a department press release says.<\/p>\n RELATED: An invasive hornet that hunts honeybees is spotted in the U.S. for the first time<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Honeybees are not native to North America.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n While domesticated honeybees pollinate many crops, enabling them to produce fruit and seeds, commercial beekeepers have been witnessing their honeybee colonies collapsing. More than half of the managed honeybee colonies in the U.S. appear to have experienced mass die-offs in 2024 and 2025, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association.<\/p>\n By some estimates,<\/a> wild insects pollinate more than $5 billion in crops annually in the U.S.<\/p>\n The nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity says that more than half of native bee species for which data is available are declining in population in the U.S., while one in four are threatened with extinction.<\/p>\n RELATED: Keeping the Northwest\u2019s buzz alive: saving the western bumblebee<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Wild bees face threats including habitat loss, pesticides, and climate change.<\/p>\n In addition, Utah State University biologists estimate<\/a> that motor vehicles likely kill tens of millions of bees in the Western United States every day.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is hard to get a handle on what exactly is happening with a lot of the bee species,\u201d Washington State University entomology professor Elizabeth Murray said.<\/p>\n The Wasington Bee Atlas aims to provide a baseline of data to inform efforts to conserve bees and all the benefits they provide.<\/p>\n Murray says Pacific Northwest bees are very diverse.<\/p>\n \u201cBig to small. Furry, hairy, to hardly having any hair. Different colors,\u201d Murray said. \u201cThere’s a lot of variety out there, and they’re doing a lot of work out in the ecosystem and also in agricultural systems.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"caption:](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/ef4e7b57e2b696f111c213275e8e78ee.jpg\"\/)
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