Help the Big-Bee project transcribe, measure, and document important bee data. It all helps to save the bees! One precious specimen at a time!

Besides being beautiful and amazing creatures, bees are essential to global food production and pollination of both wild and cultivated plants. Unfortunately, bees are decreasing in both numbers and diversity. Our ability to conserve bees is severely hampered by our lack of information on the factors driving bee declines, largely due to not having enough bee distribution data and floral association information to predict changes in geographic range under climate change scenarios.

The good news is, much of the data scientists need to answer these questions is available on specimen labels deposited in museum collections. We just need to make it digital so it can be used by researchers, educators, or policy makers. You can help! Scientists have imaged the bees and their information labels from museum collections around the US. You can help transcribe the information labels and measure bee body size. Bee body size can change for many reasons, including food, time of year, temperature, and so much more!