Screenshot of Beescape interface

Beescape

Get a bee's eye view of your landscape

Beescape is a web-based tool developed by Penn State University to help beekeepers, gardeners, urban planners, growers, researchers, and land managers assess the quality of their landscapes for supporting bees and other pollinators. Bees can fly up to 3 miles (5 kilometers) from their nest to find food, so Beescape provides an easy way for you to explore the landscapes surrounding your location.

How to Use Beescape

After launching Beescape, you can select your location by letting the program automatically detect your current location, by entering your address, or by manually navigating to your location using the web interface.

Screenshot of the Beescape location interface

To move the target icon, click on and hold the center point, and then drag the target. Once you have found your location, click on the icon (outside the center point) to drop it on the map.

Screenshot of Beescape interface indicating to click the outer circle to confirm the location, and the center circle to change the location

Beescape will provide landscape quality scores for wild bee nesting habitat availability, levels of insecticide exposure, and seasonal (spring, summer, fall) forage quality. Scores are provided for the landscape surrounding your location at a 3 and 5 kilometer radius. These scores are compared to the average scores found in the north central United States, so you can determine if your landscape is low, medium, or high quality compared to the average for this region.

Screenshot of Beescape landscape quality scores in the following categories: nesting, insecticide, spring, summer, fall for a 3km range and a 5 km range

On the upper left corner of the map, there is a button you can use to change the background map features to show the roads, satellite, or agricultural crop view.

Screenshot indicating where the dropdown is at the upper left of the Beescape map