Here is some relevant information on colony size:

WHEN HONEY-BEES ARE HANGING as a swarm upon a tree or bush it is fairly easy to say that one is a large swarm while another is too small to be of much value; but it is not so easy to arrive at any reasonable estimate of the number of bees in a hive, when they are hidden between the combs.  

So it is perhaps not surprising that while some really accurate measurements of quantities of brood in hives throughout the season were published as early as 1925 (Nolan, 1925), thirty more years had to elapse for the first graphs, based on reasonably accurate actual measurements, of numbers of bees throughout the year.  

The idea of colony-size was however already an interesting one to beekeepers. Everybody was ready to agree that the larger colonies might be expected to yield more honey; and rather like fishermen telling tales of their catches, every writer had seemed in the past to vie with every other to give a higher figure for the number of bees in a colony - no doubt each was thinking of his special colony! 

Sixty, 80, or even 100,000 bees have been mentioned without any outcry of incredulity; but the measurements, when they came, showed, as will presently be seen, that one colony having only 690 bees survived and harvested some honey. It was one hundredth the size that most writers had regarded as normal for a colony. 

Moreover, after 510 colonies had been measured, at various times of the year, the largest of them all - and this really was a very large colony at the peak of the season - had only 47,700 bees.  

JEFFREE, E.P. (1959) THE SIZE OF HONEY-BEE COLONIES THROUGHOUT THE YEAR AND THE BEST SIZE TO WINTER

Now we are getting to the heart of the matter ;-)

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