Bee Bingo Cards

By Lori Weidenhammer

We’re fortunate to have over 500 native bee species in British Columbia, including 30 species of bumble bees. We need bee spotters to photograph BC bees in parks and share them on iNaturalist.

Your photos will automatically be added to our NBSBC Bee Spotter Project that tracks all bee sightings in the province and help with our research. This summer we are excited about our pilot project to focus on bee sightings in three provincial parks; E. C. Manning, Kokanee Creek and Blanket Creek.

These BINGO cards will help you identify some of the bumble bees that you might see in these three parks, or the southern interior of BC. We have created iNat projects that focus on each Park from June 1 to August 31, 2024. We’ve also created some cards to help you identify the plants you may see bees foraging in for nectar and pollen. It helps our research if you note the plant you see each bee foraging on if you can. You can even make an observation of the plant itself and copy and paste the link onto your observation notes. (Here’s a link to getting started on iNaturalist.)

We will be handing out hard copies of the BINGO cards at our three BINGO bee-o-blitzes. We are leading bee walks and helping folks spot and photograph native bees in the three BC Parks. Everyone is welcome! If you can’t join us on those days, you are welcome to print out the cards yourselves and use them.

Save the dates! Bee Walks and Talks in 3 BC Parks: Keep an eye on our events page for details on where to meet.

Sunday, June 16: Kokanee Creek
Sunday, July 28: E. C. Manning
Sunday, August 4: Blanket Creek Park

Click on previews below to open printable PDF files!

We’d particularly like you to keep an eye out for a threatened species of bumble bee, the western bumble bee (Bombus occidentalis). Western bumble bees are compact, short-tongued bumble bees with black and yellow stripes and a yellow or white tail. Western bumble bees have a historical range from the Pacific coast to the Rocky Mountains, but their range is shrinking. As the western bumble bee species dwindle in population, they become less genetically robust. It used to be thought there were two subspecies of B. occidentalis, but the northern subspecies in now considered a separate species named McKay’s bumble bee (Bombus mckayi). The western bumble bee has threatened status and the McKay’s bumble bee has special concern status in Canada (COSEWIC). If you see a bumble bee with the white butt, it may be Bombus occidentalis!