>Allen, what I greatly appreciate about your posts is that you are a
>beekeeper who is also a good researcher, in that you actually compare
>treatments (in this case wrapping, etc) side by side in a yard.

You flatter me. I have to confess that sometimes I do, but sometimes my
opinions are based on less scientific experience and even extrapolation.
Some are based on sampling a few thousand hives in different locations 
within a week or two and talking to the owners.

>... for me to try to understand wintering/wrapping/insulation, I want to 
look for extremes,leading me to study wintering in warm winter climates,
to compare to very cold winter climates.

The first and most obvious difference I have seen is the differing amount
of stores and populations going into winter.  Any northen beekeeper 
walking into a southern yard in late fall or winter and lifting lids is likely to 
proclaim the hives to be weak and almost starving.  Hives being built up 
properly for pollination are an exception and Joe Traynor showed me 
hives in February that I would be proud to have in late June up here. A
little farther down the lane on a different set,  I saw hives more typical
of what I consider typical of wintering bees I have seen in the South -- a 
few frames of dry-looking bees on minimal feed. (I suspect that they 
all brought the same dollar, even though I would not have paid 2c for 
some I  saw.

>What interests me is that something that has a small effect in my climate
>may have a large effect in yours.  But that small effect may well give me an
>edge.

I believe it can, especially if you have cold snaps during your build-up 
period.  I am reminded of the advice that jerry gave re CCD: Keep them
warm.

There are several ways to do that.  One is to raise them off the ground. 
Personally, I think that is part of why placing nucs on top of other 
colonies helps survival and why triple broods winter better.  I recall Dan
Mayer showing slides of pollinating bees up on stacks of pallets in 
Washington state so they woulf fly earlier.

Another is to conserve the heat the bees themselves produce by choosing
an appropriate hive for the purpose.  This is only important during 
build-up and where there is the risk of a cold snap, a cold snap being
defined as any weather that may cause the bees to retreat from their 
active feed and brood area.

Some beekeepers use newspaper or tarpaper curved over the centre 
frames in a standard box for small clusters (Dave Green, as I recall). 
Others use smaller boxes (see mdasplitter.com and other nuc sites).

The fact that Dave Tharle recently mentioned that six-frame nuc 
boxes outperform standard boxes is educational. 

I read in Bee Culture many years ago of an old beekeeper in the north
central US who said that the last good crop he got was the year before 
he swiched from 8-frame to 10-frame equip't.  He wondered about
the association between the two events. I have never forgotten that.

>You've really got me curious now about your cavity fill observations, with
>regard to the optimal size box in which to build a nuc in cool weather.  I
>don't feel the need to reinvent the wheel, and want to learn from your
>observations.

As mentioned before, it is more art than science.  It all depends on 
when you split, how you split, ages and amounts of brood, how you 
queen them, how much feed you add, etc...

You see, the idea is to crowd them a bit so they never need to cluster 
(ideally), but also do not plug, overheat, or decide to swarm.  That means 
you have to predict the hatches, watch the weather, and have a plan for 
when they (suddenly) outgrow the accommodations.  You can open vents, 
move them to a bigger box, remove brood, super, use newspaper to
partition off additional space for use when required, and/or remove the 
queen and replace with a cell at an appropriate time...

>May I ask you again for details on experiments that you've run that actually
>compared the buildup of nucs (or the spam can of bees) in boxes of various
>sizes, but made of the same material--so that any insulation effect is held
>constant?

As I have said, it never has occurred to me to run a controlled experiment 
because this is so well know and obvious where I live.  I have had accidental 
confirmations, such as when I ran baby nucs and they were oK on a frosty 
night that finished off some weak hives nearby.

To cold weather beekeepers, all this is as obvious as gravity and hardly 
needs any proving, but as with gravity, Newton and Pascal proved that 
further examining the obvious can pay big dividends.

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