I did some small experimentation with regard to wintering about 1990 when 
the Canadian government had closed the border to packages from the countries 
that had mites. I settled on a configuration with 5 hives in a row with 1'' 
styrofoam on all vertical sides and an inner cover of 1" styroafoam encased 
in plywood. This worked very well at that time and has only started to show 
weakness with the presence of varroa mites, the ubiquitous use of round up 
to eliminate all useful weeds and a failure of hives with old queens to 
replace them.

While I was doing this, I tried some groups of five with totally open 
screened bottom boards and some without the styrofoam insulation at the 
front. Most of these survived the winter as well as the more heavily 
insulated ones. However, in March, the heavily insulated ones had several 
frames of sealed brood, but the less insulated ones had only frames of eggs 
and larvae. This would indicate that the lower temperature retarded the 
onset of brood rearing by about a week. It is also possible that the less 
effective seal prevented the build up of humidity that Pirker (?) had 
employed to induce brood rearing in hives kept inside temperature controlled 
buildings.



Best Regards

Donald Aitken, Edmonton Alberta    53° 41' 51" N    113° 37' 32" W

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