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
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.
Colours, sources and credit
The flowering windows and pollen colours here are our own compilation. They are informed by the standard references (Dorothy Hodges, The Pollen Loads of the Honeybee, 1952, and W. D. J. Kirk, A Colour Guide to Pollen Loads of the Honey Bee, IBRA) and cross-checked against several UK sources, but the colour values, descriptions and notes are our own, set for this tool. They are not copied or reproduced from any single chart. Pollen-load colour is a fact of nature that many charts describe; we describe it in our own words.
Matching runs in a perceptual colour space with lightness down-weighted, because a photo’s exposure shifts lightness far more than hue. Across large samples one species varies about as much as the gap between species, so every result is a shortlist to confirm against what is in flower near you, never a single verdict. For serious identification a printed pollen chart is still the reference.
Each plant photograph comes from Wikimedia Commons and is used under its own free licence (Creative Commons or public domain), with the photographer and licence credited on that plant’s card.
Pollen colours are our own compilation. Plant photos from Wikimedia Commons, credited per plant.
Keep a forage log
A free Bees Knees Apiary account lets you save what you identify and track the pollen coming in across the season, hive by hive. Build up a picture of your local forage.