Bees are an important faunal group and function as pollinators for various flowering plants. The diversity and abundance of bees have decreased in some parts of the world, which has led to fears about habitat degradation and a pollination crisis worldwide. Therefore, establishing long-term monitoring systems and making past data available widely are important for understanding bees and their ecosystem function, and to enable evidence-based action for the conservation and restoration of bees and their ecosystem function. Decades ago, a group led by Shoichi F Sakagami established a systematic method of bee surveys and conducted surveys at multiple places in Japan. In Sapporo, intensive bee surveys involving sampling bees and recording the flowers that were visited by the bees from April to September were conducted systematically at the campus and Botanic Garden of Hokkaido University in 1979 and 1989. These involved sampling bees and recording the flowers that were visited by the bees from April to September. A total of 12,900 bee specimens were represented by Andrenidae, Apidae, Colletidae, Halictidae, Megachilidae and Melittidae. Here, we have converted the information to digital data by archiving the data on the bee species and the plant species that the bees visited in 1979 and 1989 at two sites at Hokkaido University, in Sapporo, Japan.