PROJECT GOAL

Our goal for this collection of data was to explain to United States beekeepers the national and state trends for bee population growth and decline. Collected by the USDA and curated into a manageable dataset for EDA and predictions, this dataset analyzes the United States bee population by state from 2015 to 2022. The data explores changes in the bee population each year and potential causes for increases, including the practice of 'requeening', and decreases, including pesticides and disease. Environmental plant life thrives when bee populations are strong, so this insect's wellbeing has important implications for the rest of an ecosystem.

RELEVANCE

There is an estimated number of 115,000 to 125,000 beekeepers in the US, and (according to the United States National Agricultural Statistics Service) United States production of honey in 2022 totaled 125 million pounds. Besides producing honey and other honey-related items, bees are crucial to the environment, as they assist the pollination process that maintains plant and animal life. A decline in the bee population is detrimental to United States ecosystems, so conducting an analysis on the changes in the bee population and their causes may help beekeepers identify what they must do to ensure their bees thrive.

DATA SOURCE

The United States Department of Agriculture, publicly available for us from the following Kaggle link: https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/m000sey/save-the-honey-bees/data