For 45 years, Jim Cane has had the good fortune to study diverse native bees, their nesting and foraging ecologies, their propagation, and their pollination of both wildflowers and a variety of crops across diverse biomes of North America, including such Northwest crops as blueberry, cranberry, and alfalfa for seed. He is retired from the USDA-ARS Bee Lab in Logan Utah, but continues field research and publication activities. Across the Great Basin, he has studied pollination and pollinating bees of a dozen prevalent wildflowers, including one or more species of Astragalus, Balsamorhiza, Chaenactis, Cleome, Lomatium, Penstemon, Phacelia and Sphaeralcea. Other studies include bee chemical ecologies, larval and adult dietary needs, cleptoparasitism, foraging specializations, and large scale studies that explain regional and temporal variation in bee abundances and diversity across years, decades and millenia. He most recently spoke as a plenary speaker at the big biennial native bee meeting held north of Sao Paulo, Brazil.