The Harvard study shows the flaws of so-called peer review. It has
generated a LOT of discussion.
Dr. Lu reportedly says you can't dose individual bees. Actually, you
can; it is a well established protocol.
One of my students conducted his Ph.D. work on a study the involved dosing
thousands of bees, one by one. Takes a steady hand and skill (so as to not
unduly stress or harm each bee). You can either FEED them each a
specific dose, or you can inject something through the membranous tissue between
the segments.
As per the estimates of bee numbers. I would imagine everyone on this
list has bought packages of bees. In the US, bees are sold by the pound. 2
pound, 3 pound, 4 pound packages of worker bees plus a queen are common.
I've done extensive work on the weight of honey bees. I found that a live
FORAGER bee weighs about 0.1 gm wet weight, or about 28-30 mg dry weight.
A one pound honey jar typically used in the US will hold about 4500
freshly frozen bees. As a rule of thumb, I use 4,500-5,000 bees per pound as a
realistic estimate.
Roger Morse and Ted Hooper in the Encyclopedia of Beekeeping state:
Around the turn of the century, researchers estimated that 5000 workers
made up a pound (11,000 per kg).
Extreme values range from 5,600 workers per pound (12,500 per kg), to 3,000
workers (6,662 per kg).
They concluded that "Mitchell, C. 1970. Weights of workers and drones in
Am Bee Journal, 110" had published the most thorough methodology.
She found 4,451 newly emerged workers per pound (9,804 per kg), 5,159
mature workers per pound (11,360 per kg), 3,492 heavily smoked bees per pound
(7,690 per kg), and 2000 drones per pound (4,400 per kg) in bees from
colonies in Davis, CA.
So, everyone should know how many frames a package can cover. Take the
weight of your package, the number of frames that size package can cover, and
you can make your own estimates of number of bees per weak, moderate,
strong, bursting at the seams colonies.
Or, you can do what I've done, conduct a frame count at a specific
temperature - I like to try to do this in the morning BEFORE the air temp exceeds
60 degrees F. Then, blow or shake every bee off the combs and weight them.
Obviously, the bees don't take kindly to this procedure, but you can
develop a data set, if you weigh 20 or more colonies, that should allow you to
construct a graph that relates frame coverage to weight of bees at a
specific air temperature. You may be surprised at how well this can work. Now,
to add NUMBER of bees, take subsamples of 100 bees and weigh them. With
the advent of digital scales, you can get some amazingly accurate and precise
scales at a very low cost. The old spring mechanism scales weren't very
accurate. In the US, I've found small balances for as low as $19 at odd
places like Harbor Freight that are quite good. For small weights, I use a
quarter to check the scale. I mark the quarter, weigh it on a lab scale,
then re-weigh it on the cheap scale. I can produce a correction factor if
needed - although I've not found the need, and I keep the quarter with the
scale. Before using, I check the calibration by weighing the quarter.
Jerry
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