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  1. #1
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    Default Estimating colony sizes

    Found this while looking to answer a question elsewhere and thought it might be useful. I dare say it is a very rough estimate but what the heck:

    The number of workers found in a honey bee hive can be estimated using the following information:

    About one-third of the worker bee in a hive forage every day. Based on average number of flights per day by a single bee and the amount of time spent foraging, the following formula can be used to calculate the number of bees in a hive:

    N = 3 x (f/0.0138)
    N = number of bees in the hive
    f = number of bees seen leaving the nest in one minute
    If Joe observes 35 bees leaving a hive in one minute, how many bees are inside? Round off the answer to the nearest whole number.

    Answer: 35/0.0138 = 2,536 bees foraging per day. This is about one-third of the hive, so 2,536 x 3 = 7,608 bees in the hive.

    Note: The value 0.0138 is based on average amount of time spent foraging for an average honey bee colony on an average day. This value will actually change considerably with amount of food available, weather conditions, etc.
    The assumption that there's only 1/3 of the colony foraging seems low to me and it seems a bit odd that they disclaim the 0.0138 assumption but ignore completely the assertion that a third of the bees in a colony are foragers as a constant.

    [edit] Actually I think it depends on how you interpret that third. A significant quantity more bees might be, technically, foragers but are they out on flowers foraging or sat around inside the hive waiting for other returning foragers to tell them where to go?
    Last edited by Neils; 11-08-2011 at 02:25 AM.

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