>What a good point!  Where does anyone find 100% healthy bees?

Of course, there is no such thing as 100% healthy. Health is a relative thing. But it seems important to me that one start with colonies as free of signs of overt infection as possible. 

The COLOSS BEEBOOK is a practical manual compiling standard methods in all fields of research on the western honey bee, Apis mellifera. The COLOSS network was founded in 2008 as a consequence of the heavy and frequent losses of managed honey bee colonies experienced in many regions of the world (Neumann and Carreck, 2010). As many of the world’s honey bee research teams began to address the problem, it soon became obvious that a lack of standardized research methods was seriously hindering scientists’ ability to harmonize and compare the data on colony losses obtained internationally. In its second year of activity, during a COLOSS meeting held in Bern, Switzerland, the idea of a manual of standardized honey bee research methods emerged. 

The COLOSS BEEBOOK – Standard Methods for Apis mellifera research
http://www.coloss.org/beebook

* * *

An optimal colony configuration

In establishing colonies for experiments, it is useful to have some guidance on how colony population size can be expected to affect colony growth, behaviour, and survivorship. The best guidance in this matter comes from John Harbo (1986) who compared brood production, worker survival, and honey gain in colonies begun with no brood and 2,300, 4,500, 9,000, 17,000, or 35,000 bees while fixing bee density at ca. 230 per 1000 cm3 hive space. The experiment was repeated in each of the months of Feb, Apr, Jun, Aug, and Oct and terminated before brood emerged. Worker survival (22 days) was significantly higher in colonies with 2,300-9,000 bees than in colonies with 35,000 bees. 

Standard methods for estimating strength parameters of Apis mellifera colonies
Keith S Delaplane, Jozef van der Steen and Ernesto Guzman.

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