BackgroundIn Canada, the Common Eastern Bumble Bee (Bombus impatiens Cresson) is native to southern Ontario and Quebec, but since being developed as a managed commercial pollinator, it has been exported to several other provinces for use in greenhouse and field crop settings. This has enabled this species to become established outside its natural range and it is now established in eastern Canada (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island) and British Columbia. To date, the species has not been detected via field capture in the prairie provinces.New informationHere we report on recent captures of B. impatiens workers and males from south-eastern Alberta and suggest that these specimens escaped from nearby commercial greenhouses. The risk that the presence and looming establishment of this species has on native bumble bees in the Canadian prairies is discussed.

Bumble bees (Bombus Latrielle: Apidae) are important pollinators; however, declines of several species have been documented worldwide. Although pathogens have been linked to some declines, the biology, distribution, and impacts of most pathogens are poorly understood. Here, we report the first record of a recently characterized protozoan pathogen, Crithidia expoeki Schmid-Hempel & Tognazzo (Trypanosomatida: Trypanosomatidae), from bumble bees in Canada. This provides further insight on its global distribution and importance as a threat to bumble bees in Canada.

The two-spotted bumble bee, Bombus bimaculatus Cresson, 1863 (Hymenoptera, Apidae), is a common species in central North America, with few published records of this species in Canada west of Ontario or east of Quebec. Based on recently collected specimens from Saskatchewan and confirmed records posted to iNaturalist (https://www.inaturalist.org/) in the past 10 years (i.e. since 2013), we provide evidence that this species has only recently expanded its range in Canada, westwards into the Prairies Ecozone (Manitoba, Saskatchewan) and east into the Maritime Provinces (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island).