Just curious, I assume the one hive body beekeepers are not the same Ontario beekeepers who have been reporting high overwintering loss?

In MT, over past 40 years we've overwintered everything from small nucs to monster colonies.  We've overwintered outdoors unwrapped, wrapped, and indoors in sheds. Overall, anecdotal experience suggests that the smaller the cluster, the higher the average winter loss.

My mentor, 40 years ago, favored strong colonies, plenty of food - two stories with spare boxes of honey in combs in his warehouse for early spring feeding, if needed.  He split in spring, had the highest yields in MT.

His philosophy, 'I'll gladly feed as many bees as I can put into the winter.  Given our short season, every live bee in spring helps jump start the colonies so that they are at peak size when the major flows hit'.  Of course, this was before mites - he refused to adjust for them, didn't migrate, and it put  him out of business.  But, his wintering losses at that time were practically nil, and his colonies  were monsters, and his yields showed the advantage of starting strong in the spring.

Just speculating, but in these days when mites, nosema, viruses are part of the equation, I wonder whether trying to winter small colonies is advisable.  One might guess that more bees in the box provides a bit of a cushion, as long as they have sufficient food.

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