On Fri, 14 Jan 2000 17:41:08 -0700, Allen Dick <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > While in San Diego, I bought Bee Culture's pollination video "The > Honey Bee -- A growers Guide". It's a great video, but one thing > bothered me: the part about brood area. Frankly, I'd be afraid > to show it to a grower -- and that was my intent in buying it. I've had some more thoughts on this since then and written a bit more about it at http://www.internode.net/HoneyBee/ in Friday's diary. This whole matter concerns me quite a bit. For one thing, it makes me realize how unobservant we are, and what a bad job we do of estimations sometimes, and how unscientific and subjective our business is. I also am amazed that, after calculating possible brood area from numbers given by good authorities, and after counting the cells on a normal frame, that I want, somehow to believe that I have seen more brood in a hive than I can possibly have seen. I'd like to believe in as many as eight full frames of brood sometimes. But when I calculate it out I realise that my mind must have been playing tricks. I also realise that estimating areas of circles or elipses on rectangles is tricky. What are the true numbers on how many eggs a good queen can lay for weeks on end? Is it the 1,500 to 2,000 that I found in the books, or some other number? Has anyone here actually measured brood areas in hives scientifically for a period of time or counted the egg output of a queen? Or do we all just go by what we think we see? Anyone? allen