ruthmoog/Bees.MD Secret

## Bees.MD

      
    Raw
  

              Bees.MD
            
          
    # Hackathon
GitHub x Dev Hackathon 2023!  Now until 23rd May

Would you like to be in my team?
### Here’s my idea…
I volunteer with BeeWalk which is a citizen science scheme that monitors the abundance and distribution of bumblebees (BBs) across Great Britain. I go on a monthly walk during the bee-season recording sightings on a print-out form.
I’d like to make an app to make my Bee Walking recording easier, that would;

Mean I don’t have to print a form for each walk
Make bee ID simpler and faster
Make bee photography more convenient (photos are sometimes needed to verify rare sightings)
Automatically populate metadata, like the location of a sighting, start/end time, and weather

I can then view the walk data and enter them into the BeeWalk recording website manually.
Hackathon requirements

This type of project would fall under the ‘phone friendly’ hackathon category:

Phone Friendly: Projects built for Mobile (PWA readiness, iOS/Android)
Guidance: Developers can use Codespaces or Actions to create mobile applications that work on both iOS and Android devices, as well as set up automation workflows and CI/CD pipelines for their PWA ready apps.

Requirements

Built within the hacking timeframe using either GitHub Actions or Codespaces
Published with a permissive licence (eg MIT)
The submission will be posted on Dev.to

Results will be announced 8th June. Prizes include gift cards and sticker packs, and all participants will get a hackathon profile badge for their Dev account. Should we win a price we will split it with the team.
Read the blog post on Dev.to for more inforamtion.
Current process

Recording form and data entry

YouTube playlist with instructions of how to record sightings and ID bees in the field etc
Bee Walk provides volunteers with a recording form to log sightings on their walks:

The data gathered for each walk is entered into the Bee Walk website in two steps:


I have already optimised the recording form for my own use, so that the collected data better aligns with the order of the data entry:

In the field

At the moment on a bee walk I bring with me a bag containing:

phone (to get the time, temperature, and as camera, also for plant ID)
magnifying insect pot (sometimes used to capture a bee for closer ID then release, usually I just look and dont use the pot)
pen
clip board with

recording form
transect map
ID guide (shows the 8 common bees of the UK)


Some actions are a bit inefficient:

I need to remind myself of the section I'm in when I see a bee, by flipping the form to look at the map
The process of identification is not always straightforward; the features that are most obvious are not the same as the way my ID guide is laid out - I could have blind spots in my ID, and I have to flip my papers around to check I haven't missed an easily mistaken-for species
Some BBs might be common in the UK but are not common in my area; there might be less common BBs in the UK that are more common in my area that should be readily on my ID form

Terminology

The section refers to a section of the transect, which will have been defined once by the volunteer and does not change.

All sightings between the points S1 and S2 will be recorded as location section 1.
The start/end time, weather, sunshine level meta-data are all self-explanitary, and are recorded once for each walk.
Terminology - bees


caste is the role of the bee, which can be queen, worker, male, or unknown. The volunteer is responsible for identifying the caste of the bumblebees they see.
species is the type of bumble bee, which can be recorded (selected from a list of allowed species groups) as a generic Bumblebee|Bombus (where ID was not possible or distinguishable), an aggregate type (commonly White-tailed Bumblebee|Bombus lucorum/terrestris/magnus/cryptarum where BB species are not distinguisable in the field, i.e. buff-tail and white-tail workers look the same but differ at genetic level), a specific type e.g. Bombus lapidarius|Red-tailed Bumblebee, also Honeybees are recorded for info on how their presence affects BBs, they are always unknown caste. Solitary bees and other insects are not recorded.
notes is free text and will include info about the section (e.g. "herbicide use"), ID info (e.g. "logged BB but I think shrill-carder though unusual in this area, I've taken a pic for expert verification"), or behaviour/forage information (e.g. "nest searching" or "Lavender and vetch"). There is another section for general notes before submitting the data.

Specification

As a citizen scientist in the field...

... I want to log my bee sightings when I am on a Bee Walk, so that I can accurately survey my transect.


... I want to access my camera efficiently, so that I can take photos of BBs I cannot ID on my own.


... I want to know what BBs are common in my area, so that I can ID or rule out the most likely species first.


... I want to narrow down ID options based on easily identifiable features, so that I can ID bees quickly before the fly away.

As a citizen scientist submitting my collected data online...

... I want to view all my sightings for my walk, so that I can enter all of them into the Bee Walk website.


... I want my sightings to be in the same format they need to be entered in, so that I do not make a mistake with my data entry.


... I want to get rid of data that's been submitted, because I don't need it anymore/in more than one place.