The BeeMD

The Western honey bee, Apis mellifera, plays a crucial role in agriculture in the U.S. and beyond. Beekeepers throughout the world manage honey bee colonies to support pollination of certain crops, to harvest honey for human consumption, and as a hobby. Yet there are challenges associated with successful beekeeping, in particular those concerning internal and external hive problems. The BeeMD is designed to help beekeepers quickly identify honey bee health issues they may encounter, through this interactive, visually rich, and easy to use mobile app. The BeeMD mobile app provides identification support right in the apiary, for diagnosing signs of honey bee or hive problems. The focus is on Apis mellifera, the Western honey bee. While different subspecies of Apis mellifera may exhibit slightly different behavior and disease resistance, the information contained in this key should be applicable to all subspecies. The intended audience for The BeeMD mobile app is primarily beekeepers, both experienced and beginning, though this app may also be useful for researchers studying bee hives, and anyone else contributing to management of bee hives.

In this app, “conditions” cause harm to or impact on the functioning of honey bees and/or to the hive caused by disease, toxins, pests, physical damage, abnormal bee behaviors, population problems, and beeswax comb issues that are detrimental to the health of the colony, as well as normal occurrences that may be misinterpreted as problems. In this app, conditions may also be called "diagnoses."

Hive conditions addressed in The BeeMD were selected based on their relevance to North American beekeepers. Some, but not all, conditions may be found in other parts of the world.

Contributors: Dewey M. Caron, James Hart, Julia Scher, and Amanda Redford
Original source

This key is part of the complete The BeeMD tool at https://idtools.org/thebeemd/ (requires internet connection). External links are provided in the fact sheets for convenience, but they also require an internet connection. The full The BeeMD website also includes extensive, helpful information about bees and hives, a glossary, and a filterable image gallery that is rather like a visual key.

This Lucid Mobile key was developed by Pollinator Partnership in cooperation with the USDA-APHIS Identification Technology Program (ITP). Please visit https://idtools.org and https://www.pollinator.org/ to learn more.

The BeeMD website was first released to the public in 2016 as a project of the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign, developed through a collaborative effort and hosted on the Pollinator Partnership website with support from APHIS. The BeeMD is now hosted and maintained at idtools.org, an ITP platform, where the entire original website was redesigned and expanded, offering much additional informational, visual, and supportive content.

On this new platform, The BeeMD’s original “visual key” has been completely restructured and streamlined as a Lucid key, and thus, this mobile app is a “Lucid app.”

This App is powered by LucidMobile. Please visit https://lucidcentral.org to learn more.

Recent changes:
Updated artwork for release