> "A hive bottom entrance to a bee is very strange. In nature a bee prefers the entrance on top of their hive and preferably high up off the ground out of harms way"

Surely in nature bees nest in tree cavities that are the height of at least the first large branches of a mature tree, as cavities form after a branch breaks off.  Is not the normal cruising height of a honey bee 12 ft above ground?  So the entrance is high off the ground whether at the top or bottom of the nest. 

Hives direct on the ground are unnatural - and in UK we always get a period in November when the mist lies on the ground and everything within a foot or so of the ground gets saturated and never dries until we get a dry period later in winter - so ground level is  a very bad place for a hive entrance, and we use stands 18 ins tall. 

Obviously top entrances do vent water vapour but also warm air.  The colony is effectively living in a chimney, with warm air escaping from the brood nest constantly being lost. My concern is while that may be helpful at times, it goes on 24/7,  every day, all thru the night. That is why bees seal top vents, in my view.  So I teach never to leave a top vent. 

The other concern is that if a top entrance is given, there should not be a bottom entrance as well (to avoid the chimney effect) but then bees cannot drag out the dead. We get a heavy drop of dead foragers as they die off naturally during the winter, the cluster size reducing from say 25k in November to say 15k in spring. I do not have any accurate figures for natural winter die offs but surely US bees do the same? If so, how do bees remove their dead if given only top entrances? 

To avoid top entrances but also get above deep snow, has anyone (hobbyist obviously) tried attaching a vertical pipe to a bottom entrance, with the top turned over so snow does not get in, and the bottom of the pipe left open for dead bees to be dropped? 

Robin 
Wintering moderately in UK 

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