Difference between revisions of "Team:British Columbia/Practices"

• Report

  We researched about colony collapse disorder (CCD), the government's response to it, and it's effects on the environment and economy. This report details the motivation behind our project. Click here to read the report.

• Stakeholders

  We created a list of questions that we wanted to answer by the end of our policy and practises. Moreover, to get a better understanding of how our project will affect eventual end-users, stakeholders, and society in general, we mapped out groups of people of interest which included beekeepers, farmers, pesticide companies, academia, etc. Click here to see the questions and stakeholder map.

Bee Farm

We volunteered at a bee farm to better understand the current methods in researching bee health. Click here for more details on this activity.

Infographic

We created an infographic for the general public about the effects of CCD. Click here to read the infographic.

Interviews

We began conducting interviews with people from each stakeholder group and created our activities according to their responses.

Report on Interviews

Based on the interview responses, we created a report describing the views of the different stakeholder groups regarding the importance of bees, the importance of pesticides, and our project as a proposed solution. Click here to see an infographic and read the report on the interviews.

Activity at Science World

From our interviews, we identified a knowledge gap within the general public regarding CCD. To address this, we decided to hold a booth at Vancouver's widely popular Telus World of Science, where we were able to conduct outreach and educate younger visitors. Click here to read more about the activity.

Activity at UBC Farm

From our interviews, we identified a knowledge gap within the farming community regarding the importance of bees and the impact of CCD on agriculture. To address this, we decided to hold a booth at UBC Farm's local weekly market, where we were able to conduct outreach and educate visitors of various ages and backgrounds. Click here to read more about the activity.

Media

In order to have the maximum possible public outreach on the topic of CCD, we decided to contact different media outlets in hopes of them covering our story with bees. We were interviewed by UBC news, and the article will be online late September.

To retroactively enhance our project, the effects of our lab work on society were evaluated through the continuous process of reaching out to our stakeholders in the policy and practices section. In this journey, a variety of opinions were presented on colony collapse, pesticide use, and bee health. Informational interviews were conducted with our stakeholders, allowing us to learn about the general perception of our “Pro-bee-otic” if released for consumption, the potential tie of the product with GMOs, and the technical aspects of beekeeping.
How did our policies and practices this tie back to our project?

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Perception of our Final Product
In the interview with Genome BC, the looming GMO label by society in our project was addressed. We discussed how this might prevent our “Pro-bee-otic” from being a success. Moreover, through our outreach activities at both Science World and UBC Farm’s Saturday Market, we encountered members of the public who asked questions about GMOs.
In order to avoid the GMO stigma, a careful presentation of our prototype will be required if released for bee consumption. Additionally, the relevant authorities (such as, with link) were consulted on how the product would be classified and the Environmental Risk Assessment was written.

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Targeted Outreach and Education Activities
By interviewing a wide range of stakeholders, we were able to focus our outreach activities to target knowledge gaps that they had identified. For example, Hank Margraf, a horticulturalist from BC Tree Fruits, mentioned that there may be a knowledge gap in the growing community regarding the impact of CCD on agriculture. Similarly, interviews with other stakeholders (link to who) suggested that the general public in BC may not fully understand the bee death issue, and that the media attention to the culprit of bee death was disproportionate, focusing mostly on neonicotinoid use.
Identifying these knowledge gaps led us to formulating two outreach activities: both of which raised awareness about CCD and the importance of bees - while the Science World activity targeted a more science-minded audience while the UBC Farmer’s Market activity targeted a more growing-minded audience.
In addition, we were interviewed by Heather Amos from UBC News, who will be writing a story about our project and CCD, which is to be released on the week of September 21st at UBC News. Primarily, we discussed causes of bee death, the importance of neonicotinoid use in agriculture and its portrayal in the media, as well as how our project aims to address bee death by increasing the specificity of neonicotinoids to pests only.
By consulting our stakeholders before carrying out outreach activities, we believe that our activities had a stronger, more targeted impact. Furthermore, our outreach was better informed given that we had a broader understanding of the issue.