> The importance of a "water balanced economy in an optimum size colony"
> was proposed as a major factor controlling winter cluster behavior.

Good post Dennis.

Henry Pirker was the gentlemen who wrote "Steering Factor, Humidity".  I saw him
around not too long ago.  He kept bees in a bee house where they could fly on
nice days, yet he could work on them inside at any time of year.  He was/is? at
Debolt, about as far north as you can go in Alberta, and about 400 miles north
of me.  He showed how he could trigger massive brood rearing in indoor wintered
hives just by raising humidity.  He had good bees and lots of pollen in the
hives.

Beekeepers wintering indoors have observed how the bees can get hard to control
and begin roaring and generating heat if water runs under the walls and across
the floor, thus raising humidity in the building in spring.  Water is a huge
factor in bee behaviour.

Water conservation and management is a problem for bees exposed to cold winds in
our country.  Even if there is a block of ice near the cluster in a wintering
hive, that doesn't help a lot; they can die or suffer badly from desiccation.
When the ice melts, the resulting dripping and humidity can kill or weaken
them -- if they have survived the dryness.  In other locales with better shelter
and more humid conditions, the problems associated with excessive dryness are
not even suspected.

As I have mentioned before, around here, it is so dry that most of our snow
never melts.  Most of it sublimates directly into the atmosphere.  Wooden
furniture brought from the southern and eastern areas of the country often
splits from the dryness here.

allen