Multimedia treatment paper on disappearing honeybees

I was intrigued by a story on the front metro section of the Friday San Antonio Express-News titled “Trail of Mystery,” which dealt with a possible explanation of the sudden and immense honeybee disappearances. According to the author of the story, researchers may have found a virus that is linked to the disappearance 50 to 80 percent of commercial honeybees. The bees aren’t used just to make honey, the story reports. They are also necessary for pollinating almonds, apples, cotton and almost 90 other crops nationwide.

The story was well-done and explored information on the recently discovered virus, but I thought of some multimedia projects that could accompany the story on the Web.

No. 1: I would create an interactive map of where reported beekeepers in the U.S. are located. That way, readers can paint a visual picture of which areas are hit harder. A sidebar accompanying the story reports that there are more than 200,000 beekeepers in the U.S., with most of them being small hobbyists and roughly 1,600 commercial beekeepers, according to the USDA.

It can be a simple geographical map of Texas with bee icons representing beekeepers. I think it should be limited to just Texas, because the map is serving mainly a San Antonio audience and a U.S. map may be too ambitious, even for a big Texas paper. Maybe small icons can represent 1-24 beekeepers in an area. Medium-sized icons can represent 25-49 beekeepers. Large icons can represent 50 or more.

When you click on the icons, it can have information to the side of the map, such as the precise number of beekeepers in the area and a breakdown of how many are hobbyists and how many are commercial. This would give readers a good idea of which areas of the state are more dependent on this industry.

No. 2: Images are always popular, so I would propose a slideshow. It would be photographs of the process of beekeeping. There could be close-up shots of the bees along with shots of beekeepers covered in bees.

It could be mixed with sound in a program, such as Sound Slides, so that people can hear the buzzing of the bees and the workers talking about their jobs. Since this is a seemingly uncommon job or one most people would find dangerous, the photos audio and visuals would be a strong combination.

No. 3: An interactive feature on how exactly bees produce honey or pollinate crops would be fascinating. It could be a number of graphics put together and could have text on the graphics, such as “First, the honeybee must …” The second slight could illustrate the second step, and so on.

No. 4: For something more extravagant, I would propose developing a Web page on the Express-News site on more in-depth topics concerning the bees. It could explore the origins of the bees the U.S. uses, the possible causes of disappearances and affects of the missing bees.

One somewhat off-topic but interesting idea that the story didn’t get into was the origins of the bee. The reporter mentioned that this bee virus may have become a problem after the U.S. began allowing imported bees from Australia. But, our bees are not even native to America. They were European bees imported to America by early colonists. And they completely revolutionized the physical landscape of this country. They also changed the country’s agriculture and commerce. National Geographic often does beautiful computer-generated graphics and illustrations depicting what places we can’t photograph look like, including places of the past. I would like to have illustrations of what America looked like before and after the bees were imported over here, so people can get an idea of how they have affected this country.

Most people don’t know bees are used to pollinate so many of our crops, and the story mentions this in a later paragraph. There should be infographics of the crops they pollinate, how many farmers depend on them and how much that industry makes, so we can see the economical aftermath of lost honeybees.

There could also be a timeline/infographic of different types of honeybees, where they are located, when they were imported or migrated to other countries and other pieces of information. This could have something similar to the flash video we saw in class of the African elephant that a poacher eventually killed. It can have dotted lines representing bees crossing countries and continents.