Free tool

UK pollen identifier

Photograph a forager, sample the colour of her pollen baskets, and tell us when and where you saw her. We shortlist the plants she was most likely working. The photo stays on your device - only the colour is read.

Sampled colour

Orange #E9711C

Date seenWhere

Only plants flowering around that date

or skip the photo

Pick the colour you remember

Likely plants

Ranked by colour, then nudged by date and place. Lighting and white balance shift colour in a photo, so read this as a shortlist, not a verdict - confirm it against what is actually in flower near you.

A guide, not a guarantee. Pollen colour shifts with moisture, age and light, and every screen renders colour differently. Use this to narrow the field, then confirm against what is flowering near your hives.

How it works.Colours and flowering windows are informed by Dorothy Hodges’ The Pollen Loads of the Honeybee(1952) and William Kirk’s A Colour Guide to Pollen Loads of the Honey Bee(IBRA), cross-checked against UK association charts. Matching runs in perceptual colour space with lightness down-weighted, because a photo’s exposure moves lightness far more than it moves hue. Across large samples the colour of one species varies about as much as the difference between species, so this is always a shortlist to confirm against what is in flower near you, never a single answer. For serious identification a printed pollen chart is still the reference.