Texas Bumblebees

Courtesy Jessica Womack

The entomologist Henry James Franklin (1883-1958), in his 1913 paper The Bombidae of the New World (Part I) published in the Transactions of the American Entomological Society, provides one of the earliest accounts of bumblebees in Texas. Franklin listed seven species for the state.  Since Franklin’s 1913 publication there has been little else published regarding Texas bumblebees.  In 2011, I compiled specimen locality data from several museum collections to map the historical distribution of species across the state.  The results of that effort will published in an upcoming issue of the journal, The Southwestern Naturalist.  Based on that work, the bumblebee fauna of Texas is now known to consist of nine species.

For illustrations and range maps of species occurrence, check out Texas Species.

An interactive Google map is also available that details historical collections of bumblebees in Texas by county.

Bumblebees of Texas: Historical County Records (click link to open Google map)