To Bee or Not To Bee - IronViz 2016 - First Qualifier

Iron Viz is my favourite competition of the year. Each single qualifier pushes you to produce a visualisation on a different subject. I see it as a chance to learn some new skills and try different techniques that I don't always get the chance to in my everyday work.

The new technique for me this time was Hex Maps that I've seen on a number of visualisations but not tried myself beyond my Steph Curry visualisation from late last year. Luckily I found a great blog post by Matt Chambers 

This time, the Iron Viz theme is food. It took a while to come up with a good idea. The data sets just weren't as good as the ideas I wanted to explore. Until a trip home reminded me of a subject that should be important to everyone. Bees!

Bees pollinate all plants so without them we are going pretty hungry (fish wouldn't last for long with 7 billion mouths to feed). There has also been a lot of press about the decline and threats to bees over the last few years so I really wanted to quantify what has changed over the last 10 years.

So here it is: To Bee or Not To Bee (click on the image to go to Tableau Public)