Fitting a model of tritium uptake by honey bees to data

A compartmental model of tritium kinetics in honey bee hives was develop from a microcosm experiment. Transfer coefficients (parameters) were estimated from observed tritium concentration in the source, bee, and honey compartments with nonlinear least squares. Application of this model to a field study with tritium released from a vent stack was not particularly successful because of our inability to model the spatial distribution process of tritium. The environmental processes driving the distribution of tritium are highly stochastic. The predictive capability of models developed with rigorous parameter estimates from data obtained on the system being modeled is felt to be superior to other approaches.