Hi

I am looking for any studies or research that have been done showing the proven positive effect of using black material to wrap a hive for winter. It would be great if they compared similar materials but of different colours. 

Most of the "evidence" is comparing black roofing material vs nothing. Just seeing hives going through extreme diurnal temperature swings caused by extra solar heating and then rapid cooling once the sun goes down just seems counter intuitive. 

I know hives overwinter fine with this type of wrapping in certain areas, but is it due to the extra wind protection (regardless of colour) or does the solar heating have an overall net positive impact.

Yukon Bees in Cold Update : All 8 trials (5 double, 2 singles and 5 frame nuc) are all doing fine. One hive seems to have actually started brood rearing with weather still in the negative with evening temps still dropping in the to the odd -30Cs... 

I use reflective bubble wrap for the opposite reason as my question above to prevent solar heating to keep the bees in a nice loose cluster vs heating them up during the day and then getting massive evening T plummets.

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