For our final project, we were encouraged to discover new ways to address the wicked problem of colony collapse through various avenues. The "Ideal Bee" project was a theoretical solution, while this project was supposed to be a more realistic and attainable solution. We began in the ideation phase, coming up with as many ideas as possible. Our group finally decided on the idea to build an indoor beehive. Our goal was to create a hive to educate people, make bee keeping more accessible, and encourage more people to be invested in the lives of bees.
In our research, we discovered some indoor hives that already exist and tried to improve upon those designs. Unlike other indoor hives, ours was meant to be unobtrusive to the home, and pleasing to the eye.
The prototype process was new to everyone in our group. Being engineers, we were comfortable in the design space, but it was exciting and new to see our design come to life! There were some issues with the CNC router, so we resorted to 3D printed. We also ran into issues with the scaling and assembly. But all in all, I was very impressed with the results! And I was very excited to learn how to laser cut.
I was involved mostly in the research end of our project. I had no idea how many variables are necessary to consider when designing a hive! And putting the hive inside added it's own difficulties. If the hive were actually manufactured, more safety measures would need to be made, such as the safety latch on the tube and securing the the bars on the top of the hive. It also learned a lot about the process of installing packaged bees. It is a daunting task if you have never kept bees before, and I believe that is another area of our hive that could be improved. 

For the Book Club Fishbowl assignment I read "The History of Bees" by Maja Lunde. I don't usually enjoy reading books, and I am a very slow reader so I started reading the book as soon as I could get my hands on it. I chose this book because I knew that while it was fiction, it was a realistic story based on facts. It seemed to be more interesting than simply a non-fiction book about bees. The actually Fishbowl discussion for this book seemed more like a presentation to class. And because no one else in the class read the book, they had to trust that what we were presenting was true (and vice versa when others were presenting). I chose to present on Tao and her search for her son Wei-Wen, because I was intrigued by the idea of what would happen to the earth if bees did die out. While William's story taught more history, and George's story was more relatable, Tao's story was thought provoking and suspenseful. But what really made this book unique, was how all the stories fit together by the end of the book. Spoiler Alert: George is William's descendant who still uses the family's beehive design. And in the future when bees are rediscovered, they use George and William's family beehive design that Tao finds in the book that George's son, Tom, writes.
The second Fishbowl discussions were more interesting because we all had the background and information to answer all the questions, even if it wasn't our turn to talk. Listening to the first group discuss about animal rights and capitalism made me a little upset because I wanted to let my opinion to be known, but I couldn't. I believe our discussion went well because we all agreed that humans need bees for pollination, and that while there are many alternatives to bee pollination, they all create their own unintended consequences. And while we agreed on this, we also all had different perspectives and ideas on alternatives and consequences based on our own experiences and readings. And I'm sure other who were watching us also had ideas that we didn't even think of. The last group's discussion was really interesting because they discussed something I hadn't thought very indepth about before: fiction and film qualifying as arts based research. I listening intently to this discussion and tried to understand each person's argument. This allowed me to come up with my  own definition and qualifications of what I believe makes something Arts Based Research.
Overall this was a new experience for me, and I learned a lot more than just the content of the discussions. I learned how and when to make my voice heard and when to let things go, even if they make me upset. 

For the Ideal Bee Project we were challenged to come up with an idea to alter a honey bee for it's betterment, even if the alteration is not physically possible. Then we designed and created a 3D prototype of the bee. My group focused on changing some of the biology of the bee so that it would be more resistant towards pesticides and mites. This seemed to be a common theme throughout the groups.
We proposed adding a sac to the bee that would act like a kidney, but would filter out toxins within pesticides. We also wanted to add enzymes (that other insects like flies have!) to the bees so that this detoxification could take place. We also adjusted the bee's stinger to be attached to this sac with extra protein-scaffolding, rather than to its vital organs, so that the bee would not die when it stings a mammal. Lastly, we reinforced the veins of the wings to be stronger and less susceptible to the effects of the Deformed Wing Virus caused by mites.
I really enjoyed created a low fidelity prototype of our project before we delved right into designing the final project. This gave us an opportunity to talk as a group and ideate possibilities. We had so many resources at the 1819 Innovation Hub Ground Floor that it was almost overwhelming to decide on a method of prototyping. One of our first ideas was to 3D print a mold to pour clear resin into in order to suspend a wooden ball which represented the sac. When I went to 3D print the mold I discovered that this method would not work. The 3D print was not water tight and the resin would get to such a high temperature that it would both leak through the 3D print and melt it. So we changed our model to create an indent to glue the wooden sac into.
I brought our bee home with me and had a photo shoot with it! I took a photography class a few semesters ago, and I am always looking for opportunities to grow in my photography skills. I set up a still life with our 3D model, a globe, and some fake flowers. Bees are so vital to the world's ecosystem. While a plastic/wooden bee might seem out of place next to a globe and flowers, in reality they are all connected. We depend on bees to pollinate flowers so that our food can grow.
I also included the poster we used to present!

My Aunt came to visit this weekend from Baltimore, Maryland, and we had some great conversation about bees! We also did our best to educate my parents on the topic. My aunt is a botanist who works for the National Institute of Food and Agriculture. She shared with me a guide for Selecting Plants for Pollinators that SHE WROTE!! She was the sole author of two guides and contributed to a few others. The guide was written in collaboration with the Pollinator Partnership. Their mission is to promote the health of pollinators, critical to food and ecosystems, through conservation, education, and research. The goal of the pollinator guides is to educate farmers and gardeners as to which local plants attract certain pollinators. I really wanted to share this resource with the class, as I believe this is super important for us to be good stewards of our land and to help the bee and pollinator populations. I uploaded the guide that my aunt wrote onto our class Arena page, and provided a link to the rest of the guides, including one for the Ohio region, below.

Livewell Collaborative is a company that works in conjunction with UC students and faculty in order to help solve problems for various industry leaders. I was especially excited to visit Livewell, because they presented a senior design project to my class last week and I love the idea of working on a multidisciplinary design team. Craig Vogel, the director of the Center for Design Research and Innovation at DAAP and co-founder of Livewell, gave us a tour of the office. He emphasized their three main steps on design thinking: use focused research, ideation of products and services, and concept refinement. They also value the importance of a multidisciplinary team. Industrial Designers, Engineers, and even Business majors, all work together to design something that is user friendly, feasible, and economical. I thought it was really interesting that Craig Vogel started his education in science and Psychology and then transitioned into getting his master in Industrial design. He said that he tried to use his background in Psychology to help him take a unique look on design problems. I admire his work, as I too am considering getting a masters in design, even though my undergraduate degree will be Mechanical Engineering.

I also got so excited to see the 1819 Innovation Hub's maker space! For all my time here at UC I have wondered why 3D printers and machine shops were not more accessible to all students. I think the Innovation Hub is just what UC needs. It also will be very helpful for this class when we design our "ideal bee." I connected with a couple of the staff after class about even helping them learn a 3D modeling software called Geomagic, because I use it every day at my co-op job! Overall, I am super excited about all the creative potential inside the 1819 Innovation Hub.

As a class we visited Greenacres farm and took a nature walk to look for pollinators. We saw honey bees as well as bumble bees, cucumber beetles, and monarch butterflies. They also taught us about the process of extracting honey from the hives. Later in the day, I went for a walk in Summit park and got so excited to see and be able to name some of the same plants and pollinators I had seen earlier at the farm!

This week I went to both Jungle Jims! And one thing that caught my attention more than usual was their honey display! They had all sorts of types of honey from all around, including blueberry blossom honey, alfalfa honey, clover honey and so much more! Some honey was local, and other honey was from other states like Pensylvania and North Carolina. I was so happy to see a nice big section of Don Popps Honey. My mom and I have become friends with Don Popp over the years by buying honey from him at various craft shows around the city. We bonded with him quickly because my mom has the same disease his wife had. It has been so encouraging to see how his business has grown over the years!