>  England and Ireland go up to latitude 55N which is further north than any
>part of the US except Alaska...
>Of course you have a 'continental' rather than 'maritime' climate and so
>experience greater extremes of temperature, up and down.

Chris, you don't know how extreme. And some years it's not the 
extremes, but rather the length of time without a cleansing flight. 
In some winters the bees have to wait from mid-November to April for 
their first flight (your bees are gathering pollen in 
February...yes?). Those long winters are the years when "wrapping" is 
so important...here on the 45th. The black felt paper gains enough 
heat from the sun to allow the bees a short...and close to the 
hive...cleansing flight. A nice 4' wide yellow stripe of bee poop is 
the best evidence I can relate. No dead bees in the snow out front, 
and no dead bees scattered on the snow away from the hive. The bees 
exited within the 4 foot "warm zone", pooped, and flew back into the hive.


>By wrapping you are preventing the heat from the sun helping them  expand
>their cluster and move around on sunny days (unless, of course your hives
>are in the shade).

Don't confuse wrapping with packing. Packing involves adding some 
type of insulation under the wrapping material. Wrapping is simply a 
layer of 15 pound felt paper with some type of insulation on the 
inner cover. I've wrapped for 36 years, and wouldn't consider not. 
Some years it matters and some years is doesn't...but it takes two 
years to recover from a bad winter. The addition of a simple wrap 
takes only a minute to install after the hive is prepared for winter.
Mike

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