38 : The Numbers Game BEE NUMBERS – QUESTIONS AND SOME ANSWERS? The Numbers Game Don Honey, Newbury and District Beekeepers’ Association T here is a TV
programme where a headline is shown
and comedians are then asked to give their thoughts on what the story might have been about. One headline was ‘2000’, which, after the obvious thought that it might be about the millennium, made me think of how many eggs a queen lays in a day.
True or False
Truthfully I do not know how many eggs a queen may be able to lay in a day when she has a mind to it, but 2000 does seem like a lot, poor girl. I have read this figure in various books and I must say it is a good statistic to throw into the conversation when talking to non-beekeepers in the pub who are prepared to listen to me enthuse about the hobby.
How important that figure is – true or not – did, however, get me thinking about other
numbers that might actually be useful.
Actual Facts
A sheet of foundation for a National brood frame will be impressed with approximately 2300 cells, so multiply that by ten frames (I use a dummy board) and then double it because the frames are double sided, and you have the grand total of a potential 46,000 cells in one single brood box. If you see one side of the
brood frame full of capped brood, then you can expect just over 2000 bees to be emerging in the not too distant future. With that in mind, you can then work out roughly how many bees will be in the hive at that stage of brood rearing. My eyesight is just about good enough to spot the various sizes of larvae, but it is not up to seeing or counting eggs, so I didn’t explore that option.
Going into Winter
Can you estimate the number of bees on a comb?
www.bee-craft.com
If you look at a frame that is half full of sealed brood, then you can expect 1000 bees to be coming up the ranks shortly. A quarter of a frame would have just 500 bees and so on. This sort of observation could give you useful information in the autumn when you are trying to calculate how many bees are likely to go through the winter. I don’t think there is a definitive formula for these numbers, but if you keep some
I counted the bees in this image by adding a blue dot on the computer screen to each bee that was visible in the photograph
form of record, year on year, then eventually it should help you with your own style of beekeeping, with your strain of bee, in your own particular location.
The Test
So here is your challenge if you fancy a little game. How many bees do you think there are on my three photographs, A, B and C? I will give you some options, which may or may not help you, but they certainly gave me some food for thought.
Photograph A Photograph A
2150, 1437, 737, 432 or 288. Photograph B
1437, 737, 432, 288 or 148 Photograph C
737, 432, 288, 148 or 73. I took great pains to zoom in on each shot and marked each bee in the image with a coloured dot to do this factual research. It is one of those jobs you do on a rainy day, when there is no cricket on the telly, no bees to watch and you are trying not to raid the fridge or cake tin for another unhealthy treat.
Apimondia Gold Medal for Popular Beekeeping Journals, 2007, 2013 and 2015
September 2016 Vol 98 No 9
All photographs by Don Honey
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