BeeShiny data is used to generate a land use map of Centre Co., PA

The BeeSpatial tool serves as a centralized access point for county-level precipitation, temperature and land use data across the continental United States.

How to Use BeeSpatial

CPR’s BeeSpatial (formerly BeeShiny) tutorial holds the material needed to recreate the workshop introducing BeeSpatial, which was held at Penn State's EcoSpatial Summit on Oct. 10-11, 2024. BeeSpatial is a web-based tool that makes it easier to access the land use, habitat quality, weather and climate data currently featured in Beescape, another tool developed by Penn State University. Beescape can be used by beekeepers, gardeners, urban planners, growers, researchers, and land managers to assess the quality of their landscapes for supporting bees and other pollinators. BeeSpatial is a researcher-focused complement to Beescape.

The workshop covered topics on how to use R to process GIS layers and tabular outputs downloaded from the app. The instructions for these tutorials can be accessed from the BeeSpatial Tutorial..

Screenshot of the BeeSpatial application showing a sidebar with user progress, including the number of points selected and variables. The main panel offers options to upload a CSV file of coordinates or select geographic boundaries (state and county). A preview map displays selected locations as blue markers. Callouts indicate: 1) User progress in sidebar, 2) Options for uploading coordinates or selecting boundaries, 3) Preview map of selected locations.
Screenshot of BeeSpatial showing the variable selection interface. The left sidebar lists selected points and variables grouped by category (CDL, Forage, Insecticide, Nesting, Weather). The main panel provides bulk and advanced options to select data layers, years, radius, and season. Callouts highlight: 4) Sidebar updates with current selections, 5) Variable selection panel allows bulk or advanced selection by layer, date, and attribute.
Screenshot of BeeSpatial’s data query and preview screen. The main panel includes a "Make Query" button, a "Download Data" button, and a preview table showing metadata and data columns from weather.csv (e.g., Maximum/Minimum Temperature, Precipitation). Tabs for other files are visible. Callout: 6) Users submit queries to download data and preview contents before downloading.

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The following reference provides a comprehensive overview of Beescape and Beespatial, and should be cited when referencing using these tools:Li, K. et al, 2026. Beescape and BeeSpatial: Making multi-scale environmental indicators of bee habitat accessible across audiences. Environmental and Sustainability Indicators, p.101381. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indic.2026.101381

BeeShiny is made possible by a grant from the USDA AFRI Data Science for Food and Agricultural Systems program (#2021-67021-34146) to C. Grozinger, A. Robinson, V. Khanna and S. Goslee.