Bees by the pound

[vmmartin]

If the average bee weighs about 1/300th of an ounce. Then there would be approx. 4800 bees to the pound.  Where I am going with this is that I am going to weigh a nuc box with five frames with duragilt and 5 ounces of honey to determine pre-swarm total weight. After catching my next swarm, I will weigh the box again to come up with the net weight of the bees.  Just out of curiosity.   I am thinking that the average weight of each bee in a swarm would be more than 1/300th of an ounce since they just topped off the tank with honey before their departure.  I have heard that they can fly with as much weight as they weigh which would but the average up around 1/500th of an ounce and therefore 2400 bees to the pound.  :-\ Any thoughts?

[BlueBee]

This sounds like an interesting experiment!  What would really be cool is after you weigh the bees, you then count them  :)  I wonder if there is a way to knock the bees out for a brief period of time so you could more easily count?  CO2?

[Finski]

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I bought an accurate balance.  I intede to use it in breeding.

Normal bee is about  0,10 - 0,12 g.

A bee full of honey is 0,17 g. When the swarm leaves bees are full of honey.

2 kg swarm occupyes one langstroth box.

[JP]

Haven't weighed or counted them myself but have always heard 3,000-3,300 bees per lb of bees.


...JP

[Finski]

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The weight of bee is not simple. It has  more or less honey in its stomach.
I tried to measure just born but it had too something in its stomach.

50 years ago I read that 1 kg is 10 000 bees.
But I have never read that swarm bee kilo has 40% honey. It has 3 days food with it.

There are big bees and small bees.  I tryed to weight what is the difference but I did not found it.  I may find 10% difference easily in same hive.

Put 10 bees on drug balance in cage  and
weigh it with bees and without.  I wondered why gorilla like guy sells accurate balances.

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