HiveScience is a citizen science project that allows hobbyist beekeepers to report colony health statistics to the Environmental Protection Agency
In the United States, honey bee pollination alone adds more than $15 billion in value to agricultural crops each year. Honey bee colony numbers are threatened by a variety of external forces. The goal of the project is to build and engage a network of citizen scientists to gather valuable data on the status of honey bee hive health.
The project explores whether the status of hive health is measurable in biomarkers found in honey. It is the first project to specifically focus on biomarker analysis in honey and is the first bee project in EPA to crowdsource data and samples from hobbyist beekeepers.
The goal of the project is to utilize hobbyist beekeepers to contribute to a better understanding of bee colony and varroa mite infestations. We started off by identifying project risks and goals and defined our assumptions about the hobbyist beekeeper. This helped us uncover some big questions.
What is their motivation?
How can we get beekeepers to engage in the study? Is the opportunity to participate as a citizen scientist enough or do we need to include features that are helpful to their beekeeping efforts as well like the ability to view trends?
How does their environment affect their behaviour?
Is it reasonable to assume they’ll pull out their mobile devices while tending to their hives? What kind of Varroa mite counting methods are they most comfortable with?
What does their process look like?
Are they going to be entering information while out at their hive or will this happen afterwards? At what point do we ask them for information?
We visited a number of beekeepers at their apiaries who were very enthusiastic to take part in our research. They shared their process, motivations, and current methods.
Ethnographic research helped us understand who exactly these people are, what kind of environment they’re in and what motivates them. It gave us a better understanding of their implicit and explicit needs so that we were able to make the best decisions for our solution.
We quickly learned that most of our beekeepers top motivations were their interest in the plight of the bees. This meant we could focus on the quality of the information being reported to the study before prioritising reporting features useful to beekeepers themselves.
We were surprised to learn that beekeepers often don't wear protective gloves and are frequently on their mobile devices while conducting an inspection. They look up photos of other hives, snap pictures and send them to their fellow beekeepers for advice, and take notes in the note taking app. They complained that most reporting software didn't work on their mobile device, meaning they needed to keep info on their phone and enter it in later on their laptops. These needs lead us to decide on a mobile app.
We focused on large input fields and clear actions that were easy to see outside and in the bright sunlight. When they open the app a new report opens right away, as the very first screen, rather than making them go through the steps to create one. It's easy enough to exit out if they intend on doing something else like looking at an old report.
HiveScience is an open source project funded by the EPA. It meets current accessibility standards and 508 compliance.