How to estimate colony size

[harvesterant]

In several places on this forum, I have seen people refer to the size of their colony. Is there any easy way to estimate the size of a colony held in captivity? Are there methods that would work for all species?

[WillWithAnts]

Some estimates are better than others. The more you are around them the better yours will be. If you have multiple chambers of about the same size you might be able to count ants in one chamber and multiply by the number of chambers, but it gets increasingly hard the smaller the ants are. I think most people are throwing their best guess based off intuition.

[harvesterant]

That makes sense, no easy method to calculate it.