Technical Abstract: The wool carder bee, Anthidium manicatum, is the most widely distributed unmanaged bee in the world. It was unintentionally introduced to North America in the late 1960s from Europe, and subsequently, into South America, New Zealand and the Canary Islands. We provide information on the local distribution, phenology and sex ratio of A. manicatum from samples collected in an intensive two-year survey across Utah, U.S.A. using Japanese beetle traps. Anthidium manicatum was detected in 10 of the 29 Utah counties, largely in urban and suburban settings. Combining locality records from literature, museum databases and new records from Utah, we constructed two species distribution models (SDM) to examine the potential distribution of A. manicatum worldwide. The model based on locality records from the species’ native range (native SDM) failed to predict into some areas where A. manicatum has been detected. However, the model based on all known locality records (invasive SDM) suggests that A. manicatum has the potential to invade most of temperate North America, and large portions of South America, Australia, Asia and tropical Africa. The inability for the native SDM to predict suitable habitats in the invasive range of A. manicatum suggests that the bee is not limited by the bioclimatic constraints utilized in the SDM. We discuss the naturalization of A. manicatum in North America, possibly through punctuated dispersal, the probability of suitable habitats across the globe and the synanthropy exhibited by this invasive species.