how to estimate the number of bees in a colony?

[eri]

How do you do that? I'm curious for a couple of reasons. I started with a 3# package, about 3000 bees, right? When I soon do a mite count, seems as if it would be useful to know.

[mick]

I reckon theres only one way.

Weigh the whole hive first thing in the morning, when its chocka block full of bees. Then shake every bee out of the hive and weigh it again.

Now you have to weigh enough bees to get a reading on the scale, to work out how much a bee weighs, then do some division and hey presto! you know how many you got.

[Moonshae]

1lb of bees is about 3500 individuals.

I saw a calculation of the rate of bees returning to the hive in one minute has some correlation, but I don't remember the calculation.

[bassman1977]

I saw a calculation of the rate of bees returning to the hive in one minute has some correlation, but I don't remember the calculation.

I know which you are talking about and I forget what it is also.  I suspect that you need to wait for a picture perfect day to do that count as I'm sure weather will throw off the count.

I agree that it would be useful to know for mite counts, especially if doing a sugar shake.  I have one particular hive that had a count of 4 where as other large hives had a population of 2.  The hive with 4 mites is considerably larger than the other two.  Now...you also have to look for things like heavy drone population.  Perhaps due to excessive drone comb in the hive, like I had.  That will throw the numbers big time and also know how to handle such a problem.

[TimLa]

I think what I read in an earlier post was that you count the number of inbound foragers for one minute and multiply by 1,000.  I also expect this is very dependant on temp, weather, flow, etc, so I'd take it with a grain of salt....

-T

[Moonshae]

I think what I read in an earlier post was that you count the number of inbound foragers for one minute and multiply by 1,000.  I also expect this is very dependant on temp, weather, flow, etc, so I'd take it with a grain of salt....

-T

That sounds like what I heard...time of day has a pretty big impact, too. I guess you could go into your hives after dark, shake all your bees into a box, weigh it, then dump the bees back into the hive. But...would it be worth it? Not IMHO.