The main purposes of this study are to investigate the influence of shear stress and sediment properties (sediment type, water content, viscosity and yield value) on the resuspension rates of a cohesive bed in streams, and to estimate theoretically the rate as a function of those parameters. Three clays and six muds with several different water contents were used as bed material. From the results obtained by dimensional analysis of experimental data, we concluded that the cohesive bed should be regarded as an aggregation of cohesive sediment for the resuspension phenomenon. A dimensionless resuspension rate function for cohesive sediment was deduced by establishing the equation of motion for a sliding sediment and considering the fluctuation of tractive force. This function showed good agreement with the experimental results.