Aparna Paul, Society for Science & Amara Orth
At the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), the world’s largest science competition for pre-collegiate students, Iowa native Amara Orth won a $1,000 award in the Animal Sciences category as well as a $1,500 First Award from the Acoustical Society of America. The purpose of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is to generate, disseminate and promote the knowledge and practical applications of acoustics. In addition, Amara’s school will be awarded $200, and her mentor will be awarded $500. Amara was also a finalist in the 2022 Regeneron Science Talent Search, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious competition for high school seniors. You can see her project booth at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair here: https://projectboard.world/isef/finalist-booth/amara-orth—council-bluffs-ia. Amara’s mother, Carol Fassbinder-Orth, an alum of the Science Talent Search, inspired Amara to enter the competition. With husband Brian Orth, Carol runs Bountiful Blossoms Bee Company – selling artisan honey and beeswax products, as well as cut and dry flowers grown sustainably on their 23-acre family farm.
Beekeeping runs in my family. My grandparents, uncles and cousins own about 3,000 colonies of bees, and I live on a honey bee farm in Glenwood, Iowa. Since a very young age, I have been concerned with honey bee health and that has led me to try to find ways to predict colony loss before it happens. I have taken this family endeavor as an opportunity to engage in meaningful environmental research, as global ecosystem health is important to me. I independently do science fair research projects on my family’s honey bees as a way to address environmental problems. My projects have focused on the effects of land use on bee health and bee health monitoring.
From 2018-2020, I researched the impacts of land use on an antimicrobial substance in bees called propolis. I found that a high density of cropland results in lower quality propolis in the hive, as evidenced by lower antimicrobial effects and lower chemical diversity. This work was recently published in the journal Insects (Orth et al., 2022). In 2019, I studied pollen composition in store brand honey and honey from beekeepers from over 30 counties in Iowa. This project helped participating beekeepers understand how agricultural crops impact floral sources of honey. It also inspired me to start a nonprofit organization called Bee Analyzed, where beekeepers send me honey samples for pollen analysis.
My most recent project focuses on predicting colony health using a machine learning computer model called Hidden Markov Models. I trained this model to be able to recognize differences between the vibroacoustics (sounds and vibrations) of different honey bee hives. The model uses these differences to be able to predict the hive’s health state with 92% accuracy. My project would allow beekeepers to accurately predict the health of their hives and intervene sooner to hopefully prevent colony decline.
Because of COVID-19, I had to come up with a project that would allow me to complete my work at home and wouldn’t take very many materials. Almost two years ago, I worked on a vibroacoustics project where I recorded the bee noises using a shotgun microphone. However, I was only able to compare the spectrograms (a depiction of sound frequencies as they vary with time) and didn’t understand or know how to interpret the data and the shotgun microphone picked up too much background noise, no matter what I tried to devise to minimize noise. I had read about people using machine learning to interpret whale and submarine sounds, but I hadn’t considered it before because I hadn’t had much coding experience. After doing a lot of research and learning different coding languages (Python, C, MATLAB), I found that the Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) used within Matlab would be the best fit for me because it allows you to train the model using very specific audio examples. HMMs were developed over 30 years ago for human language processing and have been used for different types of animal sound quantification since then.
I hope to publish this work so beekeepers around the world can use simple tools to monitor their colonies’ health. Through my experiences with my family’s colonies, the potential impact of better health detection systems is great. In recent years, it has become common for us to lose about half of our collective colonies. I have seen that one week you may visit your colonies and check on them and notice that the colony sounds a little different or seems a bit off, but nothing measurable appears wrong. The next week, the colony is dead, and its honey is being robbed by nearby hives; the process of collapse happens that fast! My model detects problems before the colony is dead and being robbed of its stores. This early warning system may allow a beekeeper to re-queen a hive, give it an antibiotic, a miticide or a feed supplement to prevent collapse. This system has the potential to mitigate colony decline on a global scale. The ideal next step would be to house the computing software on a publicly accessible platform that would reduce the computing knowledge barriers and allow for easier usage for the general public.
This past March, I got the opportunity to compete in the Regeneron Science Talent Search in Washington, D.C. to present my research and compete for the top prize of $250,000. The Regeneron Science Talent Search, a program of Society for Science since 1942, is the nation’s oldest and most prestigious science and math competition for high school seniors. Each year, nearly 2,000 student entrants submit original research in critically important scientific fields of study and are judged by leading experts in their fields. Unique among high school competitions in the U.S. and around the world, the Regeneron Science Talent Search focuses on identifying, inspiring and engaging the nation’s most promising young scientists who are creating the ideas that could solve society’s most urgent challenges. I placed 9th and won a $50,000 award. I was excited to represent my state, family and beekeepers in this competition!
Outside of beekeeping and science fairs, I play defense on the varsity soccer team at my high school, and I like hiking and cooking. This Fall, I am majoring in Earth Systems at Stanford University. In the future, I would like to do ecosystem research.
