Honey Production Case Study $-$ Problem Statement

Background: In $2006,$ global concern was raised over the rapid decline in the honeybee population, an integral component of American honey agriculture. Large numbers of hives were lost to Colony Collapse Disorder, a phenomenon of disappearing worker bees causing the remaining hive colony to collapse. Speculation to the cause of this disorder points to hive diseases and pesticides harming the pollinators, though no overall consensus has been reached. The U$.$S$.$ used to locally produce over half the honey it consumes per year. Now, honey mostly comes from overseas, with $350$ of the $400$ million pounds of honey consumed every year originating from imports. This dataset provides insight into honey production supply and demand in America from $1998$ to $2016.$

Objective: To visualize how honey production has changed over the years $(1998-2016)$ in the United States.

Tasks:

Please explore the data set $($e$.$g$.$ shape, head, tail, sample, info, statistical summary, correlations etc.$)$ and indicate your observations $($use markdown cells$)$

Check for duplicate rows in the data and drop the duplicate rows, if any.

Check for missing values in the data. If any column has more than $30\%$ values missing, drop that column from the data set. Check for data types of columns and if needed, change the data type of some columns to the data type appropriate to the data entries.

Questions to be answered $($provide appropriate visualization$)$

Key questions to be answered:

$-$What is the overall trend of honey production in the US over the years?

$-$What has been the variation in the number of colonies, and in yield per colony over the years?

Look at the production trend across states. Which are the top five honey producing states??

$-$What is the yearly trend in number of colonies in each of the five states? Is there a state that stands out?

$-$Examine what effect, if any, the declining production has had on the value of production?

$-$Are there any patterns that can be observed between total honey production and value of production every year? How has value of production, which in some sense could be tied to demand, changed every year?

How does average price per pound of honey vary across states? Which state has the most expensive honey?

Dataset:

$-$state: Various states of U$.$S$.$

numcol: Number of honey$-$producing colonies. Honey producing colonies are the maximum number of colonies from which honey was taken during the year. It is possible to take honey from colonies that did not survive the entire year

yieldpercol: Honey yield per colony. Unit is pounds

$-$totalprod: Total production $($numcol x yieldpercol$).$ Unit is pounds

$-$stocks: Refers to stocks held by producers. Unit is pounds

priceperlb: Refers to average price per pound based on expanded sales. The unit is dollars.

prodvalue: Value of production $($totalprod x priceperlb$).$ The unit is dollars.

year: Year of production

Other useful information: Certain states are excluded every year $($ex$.$ CT$)$ to avoid disclosing data for individual operations. Due to rounding, total colonies multiplied by total yield may not equal production. Also, the summation of states will not equal the U$.$S$.$ level value of production.