Good news! For all of you who supported the Cozy Bee Project, the thank-you gifts are on the move. We’ll be sending out stickers, lip balm, and two different flavors of honey to folks all over the country, and candles will be following in a month or two. It’s the best way that the bees and I can thank you for supporting the Cozy Bee research with your hard-earned dollars. Here we see the bees hard at work, exercising to get ready for the long flight to carry all these gifts from my house to yours.
I also have some good news to share: the honey harvest went so well, I’ve decided to upgrade the honey gifts of those who donated at the $100 level and above. Instead of one jar, you will get TWO. Both flavors, the golden honey and the knotweed. For those of you who went big and were on the list for two jars already, I will be sending you full pint jars of each flavor instead of the half pints. It’s a honey fiesta!
Numbers and statistics have interesting stories to tell. That’s part of why I like doing this project. I’m also interested in the visual representation of data. Here’s a map I made of the various locations of supporters of the Project. The darker the blue, the more supporters reside in that state. Oregon is orange because there were a LOT of donors from Oregon, where I am located.
As happens, I learned some interesting things by presenting the data this way. Many of my supporters are clustered in the midwest. Some of them are known to me, many are not. Could it be that there are more bee-interested people in the midwest? More Kickstarter users? Or simply that my midwest friends were good about spreading the word to those around them?
Massachusetts was a big surprise. I’ve lived in all corners of the country, but have no connection to Massachusetts that I can recall. Yet it was (by far) the largest concentration of donors outside of the Pacific Northwest. What could that mean? Regardles: thanks Massachusetts!
My data is flawed, too, I only have donor location information from those who are receiving a physical prize. That leaves out a great many of you who donated smaller sums, are receiving .pdf reports, or donated a lot but requested no gifts.
Hopefully, once I start looking at the hive telemetry data, similar graphical presentation will help me find interesting and unexpected trends in bee health.
