Washington Native Bee Society
Washington Native Bee Society
Monthly Meeting
April 24th, 2025 @ 7:00 PM
Jordan Kueneman | Ground Nesting Bees Project
April 24th, 2025 at 7:00pm on Zoom
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Learn how to get involved with Project GNBee and help contribute to mapping ground nesting bee aggregations for research and conservation.​​​
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To register, fill out the form below
What is Project GNBee?
Project GNBee (Ground-Nesting Bees) is a global community science initiative dedicated to researching and conserving native ground-nesting bee species—an often-overlooked yet essential group of pollinators. While previous conservation efforts have largely focused on floral resources, Project GNBee turns attention underground, where roughly 65–70% of all bee species, many of them solitary, create their nests. These bees provide critical pollination services that support both ecosystems and agricultural productivity, yet our understanding of their nesting requirements remains limited.
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Ground-nesting bees can form dense aggregations, ranging from a few individuals to millions, scattered across diverse landscapes. These nesting sites are vital, but vulnerable to habitat loss, pesticide use, and invasive parasites and pathogens. Project GNBee aims to fill this knowledge gap by identifying where these bees nest, studying the factors that support their nesting success, and using that information to conserve existing sites and promote new ones. Through a combination of community-driven observations and scientific modeling, the project integrates data on land cover, topography, and soil conditions to map and predict suitable nesting habitats. This information will be used to guide the discovery and conservation of high-priority sites, establish flagship conservation zones, support local stewardship efforts, and inform policy to better protect bees in both natural and managed landscapes.
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With community support from observers and identifiers on iNaturalist, volunteer members, The Danforth Lab at Cornell, and funding from the Atkinson Center for Sustainability — Project GNBee is laying the groundwork for research and conservation focused on nesting sites for ground-nesting bees. By participating in this community science effort, participants play a key role in studying and protecting these indispensable pollinators.
To get involved or learn more, visit
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Jordan Kueneman
Dr. Jordan Kueneman is a research associate at Cornell University, working in the Danforth Lab within the Department of Entomology. He earned his Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he focused on conservation medicine and host-associated microbiomes under the mentorship of Dr. Valerie McKenzie.
Following his Ph.D., he spent four years in Panama at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, studying plant and animal microbiomes. During this time, he led a large-scale project investigating the microbiome of bees across different life-history strategies, seasonal patterns, and spatial distributions.
Currently, Dr. Kueneman runs Project GNBee, a research initiative dedicated to understanding why solitary ground-nesting bees form aggregations in specific locations, identifying the factors that determine their long-term success, and working to protect nesting aggregations where they occur.
Register for the April meeting
To send photos to BeeShare:
wanbsoutreach@gmail.com
