If you’ve ever felt a pang of pity for a starving bee struggling on the pavement in front of you, then help may soon be at hand. Or more precisely, in your wallet.

A community development worker has invented a credit card-style reviver for bees containing three sachets of sugar solution, which can be placed beside the insect to feed it.

Dan Harris, 40, is now crowdfunding to produce the “Bee Saviour” cards after the success of his prototype, with community groups and businesses in his local city of Norwich, including the Book Hive bookshop and a local pub, pledging to stock the £4 bee revivers.

Each card contains three indentations containing a beekeepers’ formula, secured by foil-backed stickers which can be peeled off.

“The first time you peel back the sticker and put the card down next to the bee, you think, what’s going to happen? When I first tested it, the bee walked calmly onto the card and started feeding,” Harris said.

“It struck me that everyone who walks around a city will have walked past an exhausted bee. That means you’ve also walked past an opportunity to connect with nature.”

Harris came up with the idea after learning about bees’ fast metabolism and how quickly they can run out of energy. He also wondered how people living in cities could engage with nature more frequently.

“I was living in a flat without a garden and the most likely place I would come across a bee was walking around the city and I didn’t have a teaspoon of sugar solution to hand,” he said.

Over four years, he has laboriously tested handmade prototypes, with advice about bees from his scientist father and beekeeper uncle.

Now he has set up Bee Saviour Behaviour, a not-for-profit co-operative, to make the revivers, which he hopes to source from recycled plastic cards. If he hits his £8,000 crowdfunding target, he can commission a company to make the indentations, which he hand-fills with a sugar solution recommended by beekeepers. If he raises more funds, his co-op can mass – produce them.

Richard Horne, a designer and illustrator, designed the cards free of charge after seeing his children use the prototype to save a bee.

“I’ve tried reviving bees using sugar and water on a spoon and it’s never worked,” said Horne. “After we got the prototype, me and the kids found a bee that was struggling and they said, ‘Dad! Get the card!’ I fetched my wallet and the card worked a treat. I think it’s a genius idea.”

This article is part of a series on possible solutions to some of the world’s most stubborn problems. What else should we cover? Email us at theupside@theguardian.com