REGINA - There's a buzz going around Saskatchewan about the name of a new bee species.

The bee has been named after the Royal Saskatchewan Museum's curator of invertebrate zoology, Cory Sheffield.

Mexalictus sheffieldi, from the mountains of Guatemala, is one of 21 new species of Meso-American bees described in a paper recently published out of York University.

Sheffield is a leading expert on Canadian bees.

He discovered the species while examining a vial of specimens collected in 1987 by researchers at the Canadian National Collection.

The single bee specimen named for Sheffield is at York University for future study.