a Brian Tamboline snip... This was a 2 - deep hive. My 3-deep hive did not succumb, I believe, because they could move up to warm honey stores in the 3rd deep. It was the only difference in the 2 hives, 3 deep vs 2 deep. Just an observation, might be meaningless. my comment.. I have been told directly by Marla at the Minnesota beekeeping lab that she runs three deeps in the hives there. I did not ask directly but I guessed at the time that this was at least partially about not adding feed which would bias work on survivability of bee stock. I would wonder if the winter time adult bee population would have some bearing on this question as would early (later winter) brood rearing???? < ie it takes a large population rearing lots of brood to create the gap between the brood area and overhead feed resources. Gene Ash *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html