After doing some research to figure out what kind and species of bee they are here is what I came up with... They are definitely a species of bumble bee. First I looked here: http://www.xerces.org/western-bumble-bee/ Look under the 'Identification' tab...
After doing some basic searching using the scientific names I couldn't decide if they were Bombus vosnesenskii, Bombus vandykei or Bombus caliginosus. This photo helped me rule out Bombus vandykei because the yellow band is further down the abdomen.
SO now I had it down to Bombus vosnesenskii aka. Vosnesensky bumble bee or Bombus caliginosus aka. Obscure bumble bee. They both range from Washington, Oregon and down to California. Vosnesensky has an even wider range into British Columbia, Nevada and New Mexico.
The two species are very hard to tell apart!
In the end I decided it was probably Bombus vosnesenskii just because they are far more common. And this is a great poster on Bumble Bees of the Western United States that helped a lot! http://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/features/posters/WesternBumblebeesPoster_reduced.pdf
Bombus vosnesenskii / Vosnesensky bumble bee
Take a look into the pollinators and especially the bees in your garden and figure out what they are! It is very interesting and you will definitely learn something new!
- Dan
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