Data from: USBombus, Contemporary Survey Data of North American Bumble Bees (Hymenoptera, Apidae, Bombus) Distributed in the United States

USBombus is a large dataset that represents the outcomes of the largest standardized survey of bee pollinators (Hymenoptera, Apidae, Bombus) on the planet. The motivation to collect live bumble bees across the US was to document the decline and conservation status of Bombus affinis, B. occidentalis, B. pensylvanicus, and B. terricola. The results of study have been published Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences as “Patterns of widespread decline in North American bumble bees” by Cameron et al. (2011). In this dataset we have documented a total of 17,796 adult occurrence records across 391 locations and 38 species of Bombus. The geospatial coverage of the dataset extends across 41 of the 50 US states and from 0 to 3500 m a.s.l. The temporal scale of the dataset represents systematic surveys that took place from 2007 to 2010. The dataset was developed using SQL server 2008 r2. For each specimen, the following information is generally provided: species name, sex, caste, temporal and geospatial details, Cartesian coordinates, data collector(s), and when available, host plants. This database has already proven useful for a variety of studies on bumble bee ecology and conservation. Considering the value of pollinators in agriculture and wild ecosystems, this large systematic collection of bumble bee occurrence records will likely prove useful in investigations into the effects of anthropogenic activities on pollinator community composition and conservation status.