I have zero evidence that what I do is best as I have never done any side by side comparisons.  Production hives get wintered as two or three ten frame deeps.  Nucs are wintered as five over five deeps or as three five frame deeps.  With either production hives or nucs there is always a lot of honey left in the spring.  My winter prep is to put a mouse guard on the entrance and turn the inner cover so the slot is down and forward.  No wrap of any kind, nor top insulation.  All hives face south.  My hives are in a wooded area so shaded partly in summer but full sun in winter and are painted the darkest green I can find on the color strips at the paint store.  I think that dark paint helps warm the hives a lot on sunny days which are the only winter fly days I get.  When I open them in spring I do not find mold in the top box.  The last three years my winter losses averaged 10%.  Most years NE OH where I live gets well below zero for a number of nights and sometimes much of the day and 120 or more inches of snow over the winter.  We generally do get a fly day every month or so all winter when it gets into the mid 40s.  I have wintered hives and nucs with open screened bottom boards and they did as well as those with solid bottoms but the queen moves down to the bottom box a lot slower in spring.  Few hives use that top opening at all even when the bottom is covered in snow.  If the bottom opening is covered in snow it is too cold for them to fly anyhow.  I seldom see a hive with the front all stained up from bee poop even after six weeks without a fly day.  Without question I could up my honey harvest significantly if I harvested more and fed my production hives in the fall.

Most everyone I know around here wraps with something and a lot use top insulation with little or no top ventilation.  I do not know of anyone with winter losses lower than mine.  People that I consider darned good bee keepers view 20% and 30% losses as normal.  I have seen a lot of mold in hives with top insulation and wrappings so those tops are getting wet for a long time in my climate.  At least one guy I know of winters in a single ten frame deep with decent results, but his are out of stores by spring and scary light weight.  Most use two deeps.

I think, but can not prove it with data, that a moist inside top is far worse than a dry top even if there is some extra heat loss from that top opening.  I am pretty well convinced that many of my winter losses are due to mites more than anything else as I have not been doing any summer or fall mite treatments.  Just an early spring treatment that goes on generally mid March but will be late this year based on the weather forecast.

Dick

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