Bees are essential pollinators with high economic values, such as increasing crop yield and producing byproducts such as honey and beeswax. Bee specimens are often collected and preserved in natural history museums, encouraging public audiences to understand more about nature and conservation mindset. However, it is challenging to perform a scientific study of bee historical museum specimens due to their distribution. For example, most of the ASEAN historical collections were collected amidst the European Colonization era in ASEAN. Therefore, they will be taken back to their subsequent country. This led most of the European natural history museums to digitize their collections. To address this, we established the first museum Thai bee digitization database in collaboration with the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), based on >10,000 bee specimens curated by Chulalongkorn University Museum of Natural History. This helps support the research community in studying bees remotely. The digitization process focuses on the labeling information, necessary bee images, and standardized database structure. Some technological tools were also involved in enhancing the digitization quality, while some adaptation processes were performed based on specific situations and the allocation of funding and human resources available. Addressing museum curation issues is essential alongside the digitization process. Some European practical protocols should be altered since Thailand comes with massive humidity levels, which lead to the spreading of fungus and the tempting insect pests that damage museum collections. Overall, our digitization efforts and adapted protocol led to the first Thai bee digitization database from an invaluable historical museum collection. This will facilitate global research collaboration and enhance bee pollination research.

   Pakorn Nalinrachatakan is currently pursuing a Ph.D., focusing on the taxonomy and natural history of bees. He is also involved in community ecology analysis and a pollination ecology project centered on bees in Thailand. His research includes studying bee species conservation planning and species risk evaluation based on museum collection data. Regarding museum expertise, he is responsible for developing a database for Thai bees, primarily based on the Chulalongkorn University of Natural History Museum. Additionally, he explores various aspects of bee occurrence data in museum collection databases. Pakorn utilizes plans for the digitization of bee collections, including transcribed data, photography, and the organization of insect museum specimens. He is also certified by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) Data Mobilization courses, equipping him to handle all detailed processes of digitizing natural history data.