Honey bee colony strength - Assessing accuracy of the Liebefeld estimation method

Honey bee colony strength (number of adult bees in a colony) is a crucial character used for both breeding and research. In breeding programs a rough estimate is usually sufficient to select strong colonies. On the other hand, the accuracy of this character can deeply affect the quality of several studies in both fundamental and applied research. For example these studies are related to the assessment of low demographic variations following a stress, or the estimate of a host-parasite ratio (e.g. involving the mite Varroa destructor Anderson & Trueman). The “Liebefeld estimation method” is extensively used in these studies while its accuracy remains weakly documented. Our goal is to provide more information on the accuracy of this method.