> I personally am confused about the whole top entrance question--both 
> summer and winter.  Reports are often contradictory.  So much appears to 
> depend upon local humidity and temperatures.

Top entrances ensure that there is an entrance.  Lower entrances can get 
blocked by ice storms, dead bees, etc, resulting is suffocation.

They also allow bees to fly more easily if they feel the need, possibly 
reducing disease loads.  They also tend to allow even weak colonies to 
maintain entrance activity.  Colonies without entrance activity tend to lose 
bees to hives with active entrances.

That is one reason we use an auger hole in every brood chamber.  Even with 
boxes of different colours, bees seem to love and recognise those round 
holes and drift less.

As for the question of humidity, bees enjoy high humidity.  I think the 
confusion is due to differing hive materials and configurations.  Each 
combination requires different entrance, ventilation and insulation 
measures.

Although humidity is good, a problem arises when temperatures change faster 
than the air exchange in the hive and precipitation or condensation occurs 
inside the hive.  This precipitation is  usually from a lid which is 
uninsulated and cool enough to condense the humidity into water or ice, 
which then melts and drips.  Some hive setups need far more ventilation than 
others.

It seems that water outside the cluster, but inside  the hive is not a 
problem, as long as it does not cause stinky decomposition of junk on the 
floor or in frame feeders (creating a bee repellant) but water above or in 
the cluster can be deadly.

At one time, we made the mistake of building floors which were watertight, 
thinking to save any syrup which spilled down, but found that, unless tipped 
forward (thus defeating the purpose), they accumulated water.  Over time, 
that water encouraged a fermentation which turned the floor junk into a 
close approximation to BeeGo.  That drove bees out of the weaker hives into 
nearby hives and caused dwindling. 

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