Wild Bee ID

Wild Bee ID is a mobile app built to be your go-to guide for ID’ing bees and bee-friendly plants, creating pollinator gardens, and learning how to get involved in the fight to protect these critical species.

Nearly three quarters of the earth's flowering plants depend upon the pollinating services of regionally native bees for healthy reproduction. Although North America boasts more than 4000 species of native bees, their populations have been declining at alarming rates all across the continent, primarily due to habitat loss and pesticide poisoning. Without these indigenous pollinators, most of our land-based ecosystems would collapse. Yet most of us are not even aware of the existence of native bees, let alone their profound importance to our ecosystems and food webs, or how we as residential gardeners can help support their populations.

​We therefore hope that our Wild Bee ID app will provide both an introduction to North America’s native bees and a tool for gardeners coast to coast to actively participate in their conservation. As natural areas are steadily diminished, we are discovering that our residential gardens can provide valuable habitat for many bee species. These adaptive pollinators are always on the lookout for urban real estate, and when you build it, they will come! Traveling no further than our own backyards and community gardens we can help ensure the survival of our native bees by joining together in the creation of a BEE-UTIFUL landscape.