Our high accuracy, bi-directional bee counters on 27 colonies at ten apiary sites and five years of daily data from April-September end clearly show that strong colonies field larger numbers of foragers.  Cam's work in Canada showed that in the spring, colonies had to ratio out bees in field versus those getting brood going - just not enough bees to spare lots of guard bees and foragers.  Those ratios of foragers to hive bees reversed mid-summer.


Buchmann's scale data, as I remember, showed that the greatest evaporation weight loss occurred at night when all the bees were home.  He saw a steady decline in weight from dusk to dawn.


We had clear days when our mid-day weight changes would peak, then smoke filled days when everyone stayed home - more or less no or only 1-2 pound drop mid-day.  Presumably, bees at home should be evaporating excess moisture.


Given that we can estimate maximum nectar loads, one could make a ball-park estimate of total mass of bees, taking into consideration weight of evaporated water.  We can say, when we get the peak foraging, the hives look almost empty of bees.  Keep in mind, our honey flows are heavy and fast and our days our long -  5:30-10:30 on longest days.


Our counters show a symmetrical, bell-curve distribution, starting at dawn building to a peak mid-day, then fading out gradually at dusk in the late evening.


By comparison, colonies at Aberdeen, 16 miles north of Baltimore, MD started later and tend to increase faster in numbers of foragers, again peaking mid-day, but the big difference was around 7-7:30 in the evening when it went dark and large clouds of foragers raced home (big activity spikes) just before it went dark.  Almost always a spike in returning bees just at dusk - usually within 5-15 minutes as various forager groups returned to their home hives.  No gradual fading out of activity such as we see in MT.


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