ObjectiveThis work was performed in support of a separate study investigating the activity of pesticidal proteins produced byBacillus thuringiensisagainst the Asian citrus psyllid,Diaphorina citri. The fourteenBacillusisolates chosen were selected from a large, geographically diverse collection that was characterized only by biochemical phenotype and morphology of the parasporal crystal, hence, for each isolate it was desired to determine the specific pesticidal proteins produced, assign each to aBacillus cereusmultilocus sequence type (ST), and predict their placement within the classicalBtserotyping system. In addition, phylogenetic distances between the isolates andBacillus thuringiensisserovar type strains were determined by calculating digital DNA-DNA hybridization (dDDH) values among the isolates.ResultsBased on the assembled sequence data, the isolates were found to be likely representatives of theBtserovarskurstaki(ST 8),pakistani(ST 550),toumanoffi(ST 240),israelensis(ST 16),thuringiensis(ST 10),entomocidus(ST 239), andfinitimus(ST 171). In cases where multiple isolates occurred within a predicted serovar, pesticidal protein profiles were found to be identical, despite the geographic diversity of the isolates. As expected, the dDDH values calculated for pairwise comparisons of the isolates and their apparent correspondingBtserovar type strains were quite high (> 98%), however dDDH comparisons of the isolates with other serovar type strains were often surprisingly low (< 70%) and suggest unrecognized taxa withinBtand theBacillus cereussensu lato.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13104-023-06411-1.