> ...in the wild, most colonies don't make it through their first winter.

But this has far more to do with swarms unable to build up sufficient stores than the "insulation" of their nest cavity.  It is not fair to credit any type of wooden (or styro!) hive with enhancing survival over the same size tree cavity.

> each study and data set is unique to the conditions specific to the case.

This is a constant problem in the observational sciences, one that often makes them "barely a science at all".  Things like the COLOSS book have improved things greatly, as with agreed-upon standard methods, more comparisons are possible.  Sadly, COLOSS has no guidelines for this area of inquiry. 

> the resulting thermodynamics, health, and survival of the colony as a whole.

The basic problem here is using the "tools of thermodynamics" as taught to civil engineers.  A beehive is really two "open systems", the living bee colony, and the outside world.  Both have too many constantly varying inputs and variable to do more than approximate the "heating fuel" consumed for any one condition, or the insulation appropriate for that condition.  The problem is greatly simplified by the study of hives in "overwintering cold storage", as each colony has a fixed mass of "fuel", and the conditions are held constant, or at least recorded when they vary slightly.  It is from these hives that we can get some useful data on what is actually "optimal".  "Studies" of outdoor hives are frustrated by the constantly changing conditions.

To compare and contrast the plight of the bees to the human experience, exactly like a bee colony, my body will constantly produce heat, but can only generate so much heat, so I must add or subtract insulation as I face different conditions.  The bees have no such luxury, except for a few lines of bees that will reduce their own entrance size with massive goopy globs of propolis.

I am packing for a trip south.  I've been doing this for decades, so I've learned. In Christchurch, I'll need short-sleeved shirts, as it is the height of their summer.  Overnighting at McMurdo on Ross Island, I'll need a light jacket (Arc’teryx or Columbia), as the temps will hover around 30 F.  When outdoor at pole itself, I will wear a base layer of thermal underwear, a midlayer of high-tech wicking fleece, an outer layer of the Columbia "Omni-Heat" pants and jacket, (with metallic foil to reflect body heat back at you, which works like a champ) and an outermost layer of Helly Hansen waterproof pants and jacket, not to repel water, but just to block the winds.  It might be easier to just wear a space suit, but they are expensive. The temps are "only" -20 F on average in the height of summer in January, but the wind is relentless, and bare skin would turn "popsicle" quickly.

Many Canadian "plains" beekeepers overwinter bees in conditions just as bad as this, so they wrap pallets, just as I "wrap" myself.  Of course they need to do this.

At the extreme end of the scale, we could do with beehives what I did with my first greenhouse, and insulate only at night.  Expanded polystyrene beads were blown into the dead air space between double-glazing (DuPont Tefzel, a truly amazingly strong clear polymer) with a shop-vac, and then sucked out from the bottom in the morning by a second shop-vac, and returned to their storage bin.    But what beekeeper is going to apply insulation in late afternoon, and remove it in the morning?

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