It has been about 5-6 years ago, but we setup 6 hives with Bee Cozys and installed Thermoworks temperature monitors/logger under the wraps between the box and the wrap, on the outside of the wrap and inside of the hive on the box wall to get a sense of what happens...we setup 2 colonies without wraps and a logger on the outside and one on the inside wall....not any kind of carefully setup scientific study by any means at the time. Generally what we found was that in the winter on bright sunny days the increase in temperature under the wraps and inside the colony on the wall would lag behind the outside temperature increase...the lag time would vary by how bright or cloudy the day was but typically it was 1.5-2 hours of lag in the morning until one hit max daytime temperature (so the increase in temp under the wrap was tracking behind the increase in outside temp, but increasing at the same rate). The lag would increase as the outside temperature decreased in the late afternoon.....so what one would see in the evening was the inside temp and temp under the wrap was higher than the outside temp....that lag was about 2.5-3 hours (the rate of decrease in temp outside was faster than the rate of decrease inside and under the wrap).......about 4ish hours after sunset the temp under the wrap and inside were the same, unless the cluster was close to the logger. On cloudy days, no sunshine, the outside, under wrap and inside the hive were generally the same.  The hives that were not wrapped had very little to no lag in temperature changes from exterior to interior on sunny days....does it make any difference in the end? I dunno....


Rich
Capital Bee Supply, LLC
Columbus, WI
www.capitalbeesupply.com

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