leif_richardson's Identifications

Yellow-faced Bumble Bee (Bombus vosnesenskii) Yellow abdominal stripe Does Not continue around underside. "There is a very similar species, Bombus caliginosus, that has a range that overlaps with Yellow-faced Bumble Bee (B. vosnesenskii). The easiest way to tell the two apart is to look at the yellow abdominal stripe. In B. caliginosus, it continues on the underside, while in B. vosnesenskii, the underside is black." Credit: domingozungri.

Photo comparison on BugGuide
https://bugguide.net/index.php?q=search&keys=Bombus+vosnesenskii
https://bugguide.net/index.php?q=search&keys=Bombus+caliginosus

Genus Bombus (Bumblebees) are our only native social bees. They are warm blooded allowing them to fly at cooler temperatures than most pollinators.
Native Bees https://openspacetrust.org/blog/native-bees/

Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America, Eaton and Kaufman, 2006, p. 344-345.

Native Bees: Get to Know Native Bees of the Santa Cruz Mountains with Obi Kaufmann. May 6, 2020 https://openspacetrust.org/blog/native-bees/

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INaturalist Project: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/pioneertown-mountains-preserve-inaturalist-notebook

"The 25,500-acre Pioneertown Mountains Preserve descends from the high piney 7,800-foot ridges into the Pioneertown Valley. The small community of Pioneertown is surrounded by conservancy-owned volcanic mesas, the Sawtooth Mountains, and preserve lands leading to the San Bernardino National Forest. The preserve has year-round riparian corridors in Pipes Canyon and Little Morongo Canyons. It is an important landscape linkage between Joshua Tree National Park, San Bernardino National Forest, and the Big Horn Mountains Bureau of Land Management Wilderness.
In 2006, the vast majority of the Joshua trees, pinyon pines and junipers at Pioneertown Mountains Preserve were killed in a 70,000-acre lightning-caused fire of unprecedented magnitude. Today, much of the preserve is going through natural vegetation succession. Some scientists predict that fire succession and climate change will favor scrub oak and Joshua tree plant communities that may replace the pinyon forests. The fire laid bare the region’s rich geological backbone."