> This was my understanding as well, particularly after reading Seeley's work.

I wrote to Tom and asked him about this topic; his reply:

> I know of just one study that has carefully measured the percentage of a colony’s workers that go out foraging on any given day.   It is a study done a student from Germany, Corinna Thom, who worked in my lab back in the late 1990s.  She found that on average, about 35% of the bees in a colony go foraging on any given day, but that this % varies widely depending on weather and foraging conditions, so that the percentage varies between 0% and 67% (= the % of a colony’s members that perform at least one successful nectar or water collecting trip in the course of a day).   This may sound high, but if you set up an obs hive, and look at how it can be crowded at night but rather deserted on the day of a honey flow, you will not be surprised by these high percentages.  

PLB

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