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Native bee species in the United States provide invaluable pollination services. Concerns about native bee declines are growing, and there are calls for a national monitoring program. Documenting species ranges at ecologically meaningful scales through coverage completeness analysis is a fundamental step to track bees from species to communities. It may take decades before all existing bee specimens are digitized, so projections are needed now to focus future research and management efforts. From 1.923 million records, we created range maps for nearly 88% (3158 species) of bee species in the contiguous United States, provided the first analysis of inventory completeness for digitized specimens of a major insect clade, and perhaps most important, estimated spatial completeness accounting for all known bee specimens in USA collections, including undigitized bee specimens. Completeness analyses were very low (3–37%) across four examined spatial resolutions when using the currently available bee specimen records. Adding a subset of observations from community science data sources did not significantly increase completeness, and adding a projected 4.7 million undigitized specimens increased completeness by only an additional 12–13%. Assessments of data, including projected specimen records, indicate persistent taxonomic and geographic deficiencies. In conjunction with expedited digitization, new inventories that integrate community science data with specimen‐based documentation will be required to close these gaps. A combined effort involving both strategic inventories and accelerated digitization campaigns is needed for a more complete understanding of USA bee distributions. 

This study was designed to examine community- or population-level fluctuations in bee species at the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge, both intra- and inter-annually. From 2002 to 2019, passive funnel traps were used to collect bees at three sites, each representing a different ecosystem type of the southwestern U.S. (Plains grassland, Chihuahuan Desert grassland, and Chihuahuan Desert shrubland). Bees were collected during each month from March through October, and were identified to species by taxonomic experts.