a different view

The percentage of the colony that foraged for nectar

The percentage of the colony that foraged for nectar was surprisingly high, up to 67% in one
observation period (29.6.-1.7.). Hence, in that period, only 33% of the colony were hive bees, i.e.
bees devoted exclusively to tasks within the hive. The high percent nectar foragers might have
been due to the small size of the colony (approximately one–fifth the population of a full-sized
colony (Winston 1987)). Small colonies of social insects have been found to put more energy
into foraging than large colonies, to foster growth of the colony’s population [Gordon 1991,
Winston & Ferguson 1985]. However, the temporal pattern of foraging traffic over a day closely
resembled the pattern found for full-sized colonies. Thus, it seems likely that the results are not
simply due to small colony size, but rather that the percent nectar foragers in a colony is often
higher than the 25% that were previously guessed (e.g. Seeley 1995).

Corinna Thom (2002) Dynamics and Communication Structures of Nectar Foraging in Honey bees (Apis mellifera)

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