Honeybees And Neonic Pesticides

Context

This dataset is inspired by Honey Production in the USA, extended to the period 1998-2017. Plus, I joined data from USGS's Pesticide National Synthesis Project, allowing evaluation of the statistical connections between Honey Production and the use of Neonicotinoid (neonic) pesticides.

The data will show some interesting facts:
• Neonic use in the USA began around 2003, but honey production declines started in earlier years.
• Some states, such as Kansas, have seen devastation in the bee colonies starting around 2003, just neonic usage began.
• Other states such as North Dakota, have approximately stable numbers of bee colonies, despite increased use of neonics

Content

You browse the data here:Honeybee Data. Play with the variables to find the patterns.

[from Honey Production in the USA] :
The National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) is the primary data reporting body for the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). NASS's mission is to "provide timely, accurate, and useful statistics in service to U.S. agriculture". From datasets to census surveys, their data covers virtually all aspects of U.S. agriculture. Honey production is one of the datasets offered. Click here for the original page containing the data along with related datasets such as Honey Bee Colonies and Cost of Pollination. Data wrangling was performed in order to clean the dataset.

[from USGS] : https://water.usgs.gov/nawqa/pnsp/usage/maps/county-level/
The USGS data is collected at the county level, by state, by year. First we restrict the data to include only neonics: Acetamiprid, Clothianidin, Imidacloprid, Nitenpyram, Nithiazine, Thiacloprid and Thiamethoxam. Next we summarize it to the state level to match the structure of "Honey Production in the USA".

[US Census, by hand]
I joined a U.S. Census definition of Region to assist grouping the states: South, West, Midwest and Northeast.

From USDA data

• numcol: Number of honey producing colonies. Honey producing colonies are the maximum number of colonies from which honey was taken during the year. It is possible to take honey from colonies which did not survive the entire year

• yieldpercol: Honey yield per colony. Unit is pounds

• totalprod: Total production (numcol x yieldpercol). Unit is pounds

• stocks: Refers to stocks held by producers. Unit is pounds

• priceperlb: Refers to average price per pound based on expanded sales. Unit is dollars.

• prodvalue: Value of production (totalprod x priceperlb). Unit is dollars.

From USGS Data

• nCLOTHIANIDIN: The amount in kg of CLOTHIANIDIN applied

• nIMIDACLOPRID: The amount in kg of IMIDACLOPRID applied

• nTHIAMETHOXAM: The amount in kg of THIAMETHOXAM applied

• nACETAMIPRID: The amount in kg of ACETAMIPRID applied

• nTHIACLOPRID: The amount in kg of THIACLOPRID applied

• nAllNeonic: The amount in kg of all Neonics applied = (nCLOTHIANIDIN + nIMIDACLOPRID + nTHIAMETHOXAM + nACETAMIPRID + nTHIACLOPRID)

Acknowledgements

Thanks to "Honey Production in the USA" (Jessica Li). That's a great dataset, and an important idea.

Thanks to USDA for collecting the Honey Production Data.

Thanks to USGA for collecting very detailed information on pesiticide use.

Photo Credit to:
By linsepatron - https://www.flickr.com/photos/43706167@N03/9246372685/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33789122

Inspiration

Honeybees are such hard workers! They need our help!

• The effect of neonics needs to be understood more deeply.
• Why do neonics seem to cause such grave harm in some places (e.g. North Dakota) but not so much other places?