Colony Collapse Disorder

Team: 102

School: Navajo Preparatory

Area of Science: Behavioral and Social Sciences

Interim: Problem Definition
Few people across the world are aware of colony collapse disorder. Most have no knowledge about the subject and are highly unaware of the consequences that will happen if nothing is done to help this problem. Colony Collapse Disorder is also known as Honey Bee Depopulation Syndrome. It is a phenomenon in which worker bees from a beehive or European honey bee colony abruptly disappear. This is a basic definition of what CCD is. There whereabouts of the missing honeybees remain unknown to scientists. The effects of CCD could be devastating if nothing is done. Some consequences include a failure in the economy and the health of the world's civilians.

As a team we have decided to utilize the program NetLogo. Our plan is to create artificial honeybees and divide the project into sections. The sections will be labeled according to the specific hypothesis' , from scientists all over the world, that they think may be the reason why the honeybees are disappearing. We have not decided on how many hypothesis' that we are going to test but there should be well over 5 hypothesis' that we want to utilize the program with.


Problem Solution
The program NetLogo will enable us to test the hypothesis that scientists have come up with. Since NetLogo allows us to create honeybees we will also be able to create diseases, such as pesticides, that will give us an estimate or possibly a reason why these honeybees are dying off so fast.


Progress to date
Our project is mostly about researching and getting different opinions from scientists about this cause. We have conducted research and are continuing doing so. As soon as we get NetLogo set up on a computer here at Navajo Prep we will begin to utilize it as soon as possible. As a team, we attended a workshop at Bloomfield High School intended for the Supercomputing Challenge. While there we learned how to use the programs NetLogo and StarLogo. We decided to utilize NetLogo because with NetLogo we are able to create a population of honeybees, create a disease, and kill off honeybees with that certain disease we created. NetLogo is the best choice to go with based on those principles we are able to use.

Expected Results
The results we expect from the program and researching is find solutions to the Colony Callapse Disorder (CCD). The information that will be given will give us an estimate of how much the human and honey bee population will be effected.


Team Members: Alexis Archambault, Ariel Nephew, and Wilfred Jumbo

Sponsoring Teacher: Mavis Yazzie

References
Bees and Pollination. 2009. Ohio State University. 2 Nov. 2009 http://www.oardc.ohio-state.edu/agnic/bee/ccd.htm

Dennis vanEngelsdorp, Jay D. Evans, Claude Saegerman, Chris Mullin, Eric Haubruge, Bach Kim Nguyen, Maryann Frazier, Jim Frazier, Diana Cox-Foster, Yanping Chen, Robyn Underwood, David R. Tarpy, Jeffery S. Pettis. Colony Collapse Disorder: A Descriptive Study. University of Georgia. 2009

Sanford, Malcolm. "Bee Culture." The Magazine of American Beekeeping 12 Aug. 2009:B3

Armas, Genaro. “Mystery Ailment Strikes Honeybees.” The Washington Post 2007; C1


The Vanishing of The Honeybees. Dir. Dan Shapely. Plan Bee, 2006. Film

Team Members:

  Alexis Archambault
  Ariel Nephew
  Wilfred Jumbo

Sponsoring Teacher: Mavis Yazzie

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