About us / Bee Finder
The Bee Finder is a freely available web app. Its aim is to promote native wild bees in private and public areas. It helps to identify the presence of wild bees at any location in Switzerland, prioritises them according to their need for support and advises on targeted support through planting, the creation of nesting sites and other measures.
Bee Finder is not just a helper for private balcony and garden owners who want to contribute to the promotion of wild bees. It also supports municipalities in the maintenance of their areas, companies in the upgrading of their premises, architects in the planning of buildings and farmers in the realisation of their ecological requirements.
Function
Species conservation works most effectively when species already present at a site are specifically promoted. The basis for any effective action plan is therefore knowledge of the locally occurring fauna.
The Bee Finder helps with :
- identifying the wild bee species occurring at a specific address
- prioritising them according to their support requirements
- explicitly naming the pollen sources required for bee support that are well adapted to the circumstances of the site
- and knowing which nesting requirements they need
Data content
The Bee Finder has
- Information on 574 wild bee species
- Photos of 554 wild bee species
- Around 100,000 pinpoint bee locations
Distribution Data for Wild Bees
The Bee Finder's distribution data is made up exclusively of validated individual findings. They are mainly derived from systematic wild bee mapping. The Bee Finder is growing: the results of new mappings are fed in through regular data updates.
Coverage of the data is still patchy because many municipalities have not yet mapped their areas, and we invite you to do so.
Data source: infofauna
Current Coverage
Basic Data on Wild Bees
The species portraits of 574 wild bees were compiled and provided by André Rey.
Photos of Wild Bees
The wild bee photos of the Bee Finder were provided by the following photographers:
- André Rey
- Jürg Sommerhalder
- Esther Vogel
Photos of missing species or species for which we currently only offer photos of specimens are welcome.
Please note: The Bee Finder cannot offer photo fees.
Plant Data
The information on the plants comes from Info Flora, based on the Flora indicativa database. We obtain the names, the levels of endangerment and the indicator values from this database.
For detailed information on the individual plants, we link to the Info Flora website. It may happen that we do not link to the plant species but to the respective plant genus.
Funding
The Bee Finder web app is based on an existing solution whose rights are held by the software company simple & co GmbH. The original software was made available to us as source code by the rights holders for free use. The further development and relaunch as Bee Finder was financed by IG Wilde Biene itself. Where the funds were not sufficient, members of the organisation with specialist knowledge made a significant amount of voluntary work! We are extremely grateful to everyone involved in the project.
Version 2 (Release 2025)
Version 2 of Bee Finder was significantly funded by the following organisations:
Foundations:
- Sophie und Karl Binding Stiftung
- Stiftung Corymbo
- Ernst Göhner Stiftung
- SOMAHA Foundation
- Dr. Berthold Suhner Stiftung
- Vontobel Foundation
Cantons, municipalities and associations:
- Kanton Aargau, Departement Bau, Verkehr und Umwelt, Abteilung Landschaft und Gewässer
- Kanton Bern, Amt für Landschaft und Natur, Abteilung Naturförderung
- Kanton Luzern, Bau- Umwelt- und Wirtschaftsdepartement, Abteilung Landwirtschaft und Wald
- Municipality of Hünenberg
- Naturschutzverein Bassersdorf/Nürensdorf
The following organisations / persons shared their expertise:
- Info Flora
- Info Fauna
- Khalil Belaid
- Andreas Kunz
- Christoph Uhlemann
- Mirjam Uzor
- Peter and Sabina Vogel
We urgently need donations and funding to operate and further develop the Bee Finder.