Hive Inspection 20140424

I went into my new, growing split this afternoon.  Things looked to be in good shape although I plan a little more detailed examination shortly (see below).  There were no queen cells, a few drone cells, lots of honey (probably from the sugar water I've been feeding), and some pollen (I'm not experienced enough to tell if it was a lot, sufficient, or what).  The pollen patty strips I put on one week earlier were all gone.

As I took out and examined each frame I took a picture of each face with a digital camera.  I was able to identify and estimate how much capped brood was on each face.  I used Paint to draw a rectangle that I estimated to more-or-less identify the capped brood.  Paint gives the dimensions of the rectangle in pixels.  By measuring the height of the frame (5.625 inches) in pixels I could convert pixels squared to inches squared.  As there are 25 cells per square inch another multiplication gives the number of cells (hence, bees).  See the image below.

All told there were 14 faces containing at least some capped brood.  The smallest patch was about 6 square inches (150 cells) and the largest was 63 square inches (1,575 cells).  All together there were 482 square inches which computes to 12,050 cells of capped brood.  As capped brood exists for 12 days we can estimate the average number of eggs laid starting 21 days prior and extending to 9 days prior was 1,000 per day.An estimate of the total brood can be made by figuring 3x1,000 eggs and 6x1,000 larvae for a total of 21,000 covering 840 square inches or 6 1/2 equivalent frames at 60% coverage.

Is this a good, bad or indifferent value?  I don't know.  Only by comparing to other queens/hives or other times (this was a new split originally and I think the queen may have been hampered by insufficient space as the workers drew out more comb).  But it is a real number (within the bounds of the estimation technique).  Based on the analysis in the previous post, this hive could ultimately level off at some 40,000 bees.