During stores, the beam‐beam interaction has a significant impact on the beam and luminosity lifetimes in RHIC. This was observed in heavy ion, and even more pronounced in proton collisions. Observations include measurements of beam‐beam induced tune shifts, lifetime and emittance growth measurements with and without beam‐beam interaction, and background rates as a function of tunes. In addition, RHIC is currently the only hadron collider in which strong‐strong beam‐beam effects can be seen. Coherent beam‐beam modes were observed, and suppressed by tune changes. In this article we summarize the most important beam‐beam observations made during stores so far. © 2003 American Institute of Physics