A great deal of information is stored in specimen collections. Much of this information is only available to people who have immediate, local access to the collections. GBIF, the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, was created to make this type of information more widely available, so that it can be used by policy makers, agriculturists and conservationists for making decisions. During 2006, GBIF decided to prioritise pollinators with bees as the chief area of interest. The aim is to have a catalogue (currently 80% complete) with all the bees in the world and 1 million specimens data based by about March 2007. BioNET-SAFRINET has a catalogue (100% complete) for the bees of sub-Saharan Africa and the East Indian Ocean Islands (2,714 different bee species) and about 50,000 specimen records. Representatives of the Eastern Hemisphere continents met in November 2006 to establish what data is available, who can contribute and how to fill the gaps. This project, coordinated by Michael Ruggiero (Integrated Taxonomic Information System), is a wonderful example of collaboration on a global scale.