Problem Solving

Problem solving is the analysis and solution of tasks or situations that are complex or ambiguous and that pose difficulties or obstacles of some kind (Mayer & Wittrock, 2006). Beekeepers use problem solving techniques everyday in production. For instance, when a beekeeper loses a colony of bees he must find what is causing the problem and figure out how to fix it before he loses another colony. The first thing he will notice is the traffic flowing in and out of the hive. If something does not appear to be normal he will begin an inspection of the hive. From there, he will infer from his past experiences or to new references and work to find a solution. Solutions come in many forms depending on the severity of the problem. It is most common for beekeepers to run into ill-structured problems, therefore needing to use heuristics to find a solution. For instance when a beekeeper believes something to be abnormal in his apiary he might flip through the pages of a reference guide to identify the problem. Some strategies that beekeepers use would be problem analysis and analogical thinking. With problem analysis a beekeeper takes all the information he can gather and breaks it down into smaller portions to find a solution. Analogical thinking however draws upon the beekeepers past experiences, and that information is used to solve the task at hand.