>He has published a paper “Ratios of colony mass to thermal conductance of tree and man-made nest enclosures of Apis mellifera: implications for survival, clustering, humidity regulation and Varroa destructor” in the Journal of Biometeorology. See http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00484-015-1057-z

I'm hoping someone with access and the ability to evaluate this paper can help us understand if this research is something we should give more thought to. I've done my own amateur experimenting with foil faced polyisocyanurate winter boxes designed to both reflect back infrared heat and add thermal resistance. I don't use top ventilation and for the last few years have been thinking more about the normal convective flow in a natural colony. But the most interesting part of Mitchell's paper for me is the notion that the insulation value of man-made hive bodies my actually evoke a winter survival mode marked with frequent tight clustering rather than the more natural thermalregulation behavior that may be happening in a taller cylindrical tree cavity.  

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