Technical Abstract: Recently there has been considerable concern about declines in bee communities, both in agricultural and natural habitats. The value of pollination to agriculture, provided primarily by bees, is > $200 billion US annually, and in natural ecosystems is thought to be even greater. However, because no monitoring program exists to accurately detect insect pollinator declines, it is difficult to quantify the status of bee communities, or estimate the extent of declines. We used data from multi-year studies of bee communities to develop a $2 million program to monitor pollinators at regional, national, or international scales. We estimate that a monitoring program based on 200-250 sampling locations would provide sufficient power to detect small (2-5%) annual declines in the number of species and in total abundance over a five-year period. To detect declines as small as 1% annually would require substantially more than 300 sampling locations and monitoring for as long as 10 years. Given the role of pollinators in food security and ecosystem function, we recommend establishment of integrated regional and international monitoring programs to detect change in pollinator communities. Our plan of action serves as a model for developing similar rigorous monitoring approaches, in the face of global environmental change.