Dear BEE-L,
On July 11 James Bach wrote, in part:
> The lowest temperature measured in
>the center of the clusters was 48 F. (8.88 C.) even though we had 2-4 inches
>of snow on the ground in the vicinity of the hives for several days in
>January. The temperature above the clusters was always 10 F. above the
>ambient temperature no matter the time of day the reading was taken.>
                             ..........
        These temperatures sound way too low to me. Years ago I helped my
daughter do a cluster temperature measuring experiment and we found that the
center of the cluster was always about 95 degrees F no matter how cold it
got outside. Even at minus 20 degrees ambient! That result is in agreement
with what others have found. Maybe the queen is always laying an egg or two
in the center of the cluster?
        I wonder if maybe James' temperature measuring method might have
been bothered by too much heat conduction to the outside by the very probe
being used to measure the temperature. Or perhaps the bees were scattering
away from the probe as it entered the cluster. My daughter and I used a
thermistor probe coupled to the outside by very thin wires. We kept a set of
thin-walled, low heat conductivity, tubes in the hive to permit guiding the
probe into the cluster in a number of places in a non-intrusive way.
                Ernie Huber