Beekeeping Networks: Small-World Ties & Generational Legacy

Beekeeping culture spreads through people, not just hives: local club meetings, mentor pairings, online forums and citizen-science projects all form a social network that carries practical knowledge from one generation of beekeepers to the next. This simulation builds that network as a Watts–Strogatz small-world graph — a ring of local ties plus a tunable share of long-distance "networking" ties — and runs an independent-cascade diffusion model across it each season: informed members teach their neighbours with a set probability, mentors teach more effectively, and members eventually retire and are replaced by novices. Watch how far the network reaches (β), how strong mentoring is, and how fast the community turns over all shape whether knowledge saturates the group or dies out locally — while a cumulative archive shows the legacy that survives every individual member's tenure.