Bees are the most important pollinating group in most geographic regions. Some agricultural and some wild plants are dependent on specific species of bees for pollination, and therefore, for function and survival. This research project is part of a large project on the bees of Iowa and focuses on the bee community in the northeast hill prairies of the state. A plant community description will help determine if the bees specialize in only some taxonomically related plants (oligolecty) or if they are less specific and can forage from diverse plant families (polylecty). The first hypothesis assumes that if oligolecty is common, then bee pollinators would have followed the prairie plants from the west that invaded the hill prairies. An alternative hypothesis assumes that most bees are polylectic and nesting locations and materials are critical and bees are dependent upon woodland surrounding hill prairies for nesting opportunities not available in the west, and therefore, bee community would not be similar to that of western prairies. Five geographically separated hill prairies will be sampled during the months of June, July and August 2005. Bee surveys and plant surveys will follow and will be done using methods identical to those used in previous studies by the Hendrix Lab. Bees are sampled using two techniques: pan-trapping and sweep-netting. For plant surveys, subplots are used and only plants with open flowers are counted.