Swarm size

>Posters have described the size of swarms in pounds. How is that accomplished?
An estimate based on the size of the cluster when captured, some can tell just by looking and if it's the sizes of a basketball it weighs this much.

Anyone know how many pounds a basketball swarm worth of bees weighs?

To be more accurate you could weigh the cardboard box full of bees and empty.

Sounds like you have a large swarm, keep giving them room or they will swarm again.

I try to base my estimates on a package of bees. I caught a small swarm last night that was around the size of a package so I called it three pounds. I would guess a basketball sized one to be around 2.5 packages.

A good solid 3 pound package of bees will generally cover 7 frames, so 17 frames of bees would be somewhere around 9 pounds, about 32,000 bees.