Question

Herman has a honey bee hive. The hive starts with a population of 50,000 bees, but because of environmental stresses the population decreases by 10% every year. Each bee lives exactly one season, and produces 1 gram of honey over its lifetime.

a) How many bees are left at the end of the fifth year?

b) How much total honey does the hive produce over five years?

Answer 1

(a)

Compute the bees left at the end of 5 years, using the equation as shown below:

Bees left = Starting population*(1 – Deflation rate)^{Number of periods}

                  = 50,000*(1 – 0.10)^{5 years}

              = 29,525 bees

Hence, the bees left at the end of the 5^th year is 29,525.

(b)

Compute the total honey produced over 5 years, using MS-excel as shown below:

The result of the above table is as follows:

Hence, the total honey produce over 5 years is 204,755.