a Brian Tamboline snip... 
This was a 2 - deep hive. My 3-deep hive did not succumb,  I believe, because they could move up to warm honey stores in the 3rd deep. It was the only difference in the 2 hives, 3 deep vs 2 deep. Just an observation, might be meaningless.

my comment..
I have been told directly by Marla at the Minnesota beekeeping lab that she runs three deeps in the hives there.  I did not ask directly but I guessed at the time that this was at least partially about not adding feed which would bias work on survivability of bee stock.

I would wonder if the winter time adult bee population would have some bearing on this question as would early (later winter) brood rearing???? < ie it takes a large population rearing lots of brood to create the gap between the brood area and overhead feed resources.

Gene Ash 

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html