UCSB Races to Digitize Bee Collections for A.I. Era

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (KEYT) - Tiny wings. Hidden details. A world rarely seen is coming into focus.

“Insects are really numerous. There’s millions of insects on the planet. They’re incredibly important for pollination like bees," said researcher Katja Seltmann of UC Santa Barbara.

The Big Bee Project aims to unlock hidden information inside collections that have long sat in drawers.

Researchers at UC Santa Barbara are digitizing vast collections of bees and other pollinators—some gathered decades ago.

"What we’re doing is high resolution imaging and using computer vision and new technologies like AI to try to understand bee traits," said Seltmann.

Each specimen holds clues about where species lived, how they shifted, and what may now be at risk.

"That allows us to test hypothesis about evolution for bees, and also to use those images, train machine, learning models that we’re going to use to sort through images we collect in the field," said assistant researcher Chris Evelyn of UC Santa Barbara.

Once the insects are digitized researchers can make that data accessible to scientists all over the world.

Through detailed imaging and careful labeling, every insect becomes part of a growing global archive.

The expanding database helps researchers follow climate patterns, habitat loss, and pollinator decline.

With millions more still waiting to be processed, the work continues—one specimen at a time.

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