BeePop: A Year in the Hive

The Bee Hive's Response to Dramatic Events

Stable conditions inside a hive cannot continue forever. At some point, the hive becomes overcrowded or is disturbed. The queen becomes old and is replaced. A disease may affects the hive. Environmental conditions may change - resources may vanish, or the area near the hive may be sprayed by pesticide. We will use BEPOPITA to simulate the effects of these dramatic events.

Below are five critical situations that a hive may face.

a swarm
- Approximately 25% to 30% of the house bees and foraging bees leave with a swarm. You can simulate this by keeping 70% to 75% of these populations and continuing the model.
a brood disease,
- Chalkbrood is a disease that kills the larvae - brood that are five days old or younger. You can simulate this by keeping 75% of the brood population.
resource depletion,
- This will force the foraging bees to look harder for resources. You can simulate this by setting D equal to 0.25 for the month in which resources are depleted.
supercedure of the queen, or
- With supercedure, the colony can go without eggs for 28 days. You can simulate this with a brood score B equal to 0 for the month in which the queen is superceded.
death by pesticide of a fraction of the foraging population.
- Having 25% of the foraging population die from a pesticide spray is typical. This number can go higher if the foraging bees bring the pesticide back to the nest.

To simulate the three hive events - swarm, death by pesticide, death from a brood disease - choose 0 for the MONTH in the BEPOPITA program. Make the changes in the hive population, and return to BEPOPITA. The brood population is stored under U, the house bee population is stored under V, and the forager population is stored under W.