Thank you so much, Dr. Ascher. Very exciting - I just knew sitkensis had to be here too! Kelsey will be happy to know her id was correct!

All right - win! That's another species for your list!

I keep a bumblebee life list - kind of like my bird life list. It feels silly, but they're such wonderful creatures.

Thanks for your thoughts. Very much appreciated sitkensis was my first thought (it had a something sorta different about it). But every time I think I've photographed a sitkensis here (my home) it turns out to be mixtus.

I'll wait and see what others thing, but so excited if it is a sitkensis! (That would be confirmed #6 bombus spp. at my place in urban portland....)

Nice! So far I've seen 4 species in urban Seattle: vosnesenskii and mixtus (most common), and then less commonly californicus, with occasional melanopygus. I've also seen occidentalis not far from Seattle, and I know a guy who has seen sitkensis in Seattle proper.

We should have some others, too - perhaps nevadensis, caliginosus (hard to tell from vos), vandykei (same), sitkensis, flavifrons (maybe just up in the mountains, I've seen it there), bifarius, rufocinctus, insularis, fernaldae, and suckleyi, but I've never seen any of those guys.

Who else have you seen?

Well, I'm only recording at my yard. (Quite urban in location. But to be fair it's just under a half acre and I pack it full of invertebrate habitat...and several of my neighbors have fairly friendly spaces too which means all together about two acres of better-than-average urban habitat...also a few other factors which make it a complex site but that would be to digress.)

*B. vosnesenskii (longest season, very common)
*B. melanopygus (early, not super long season (though I saw one on a walk in the neighborhood on 11.8.13! which I think was just a queen disturbed from slumber, very common)
*B. mixtus (later that vos and mela in showing up, very common)
*B. californicus (uncommon, but see a few at any one time, first positive id 2013 season)
*B. griseocollis (uncommon, one sighted in 2012 quite late, never seen since, though some bombus buzzed by me late this year and it kinda looked like it might be griseocollis but uh, not betting on it)

And if you're right, sitkensis too!

Note - Common, very common, uncommon, are all on my own relative scale using B.vos as the standard of common and B. griseocollis as standard of uncommon. No hard numbers to attach to the scale and can't spend as many days tracking as I'd like (so limited sample). So take these terms with a grain or mountain of salt.