Please note: This is a Sole Source Notification. The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation is the only entity conducting standardized statewide bumble bee surveys in Colorado. Currently five bumble bee species are being petitioned for listing in Colorado highlighting the importance of expanding monitoring across the state to improve abundance, distribution, and trend data. While there are some researchers at local universities that conduct research on bumble bees, these labs do not have the capacity or scope to implement this work on a statewide level, or existing established collaboratives involving other states. Xerces has implemented successful monitoring programs in 20 states, documenting over 100,000 bumble bee occurrence records. Xerces has unique expertise in training observers, collecting data, classifying species, maintaining databases, and reporting results. The methods used to collect information using non-lethal techniques and to classify observations to species have been developed by Xerces and are fundamental to statewide and broader implementation of this program. The multi-state collaborative led by Xerces brings additional value that is particularly relevant to data analysis at meaningful spatial scales, given the broad ranges of bumble bee species.
