Classification of the Bees of the World

The bee collection at the University of Kansas is one of the most comprehensive collections in the world, presently with about 550,000 specimens. Our material is truly global in coverage and represents one of the most intensively studied collections. Numerous scientists visit the collection each year for their research. Our material is being retroactively databased and georeferenced and the data will eventually be made available on the internet. To date nearly 200,000 bee specimens are included in the database (mostly from North America). The following hierarchical listing is a complete checklist of all valid genera and subgenera for the bees of the world (both living and fossil taxa). The listing will be periodically updated as new taxa are proposed or others synonymized. In the future and as our databasing efforts near completion, we will attempt to provide references to the current analyses used to base the hierarchy upon, include synonyms, photographs, &c.

Format
Taxa which are not represented in our holdings are denoted by double asterisks (**) and highlighted in red. Please help us to obtain species of those groups. Daggers (†) indicate fossil groups. Family-group names for bees have been summarized by Engel (2005); it is that suprageneric, hierarchical classification which is followed herein. The generic classification in the various sections generally follows that of Michener (2000), with minor modifications. For smaller subfamilies and genera, we have provided a listing of included species and indicated those not present in our collection.

Engel, M. S. 2005. Family-group names for bees (Hymenoptera: Apoidea). Amer. Mus. Novitates  3476: 1-33.

Michener, C. D. 2000. The Bees of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press; Baltimore, MD.

October 2004