>Evolution typically selects against behaviors that are counterproductive.

Given their long association with tree hollows across a broad range of climates, it is possible we are overthinking it.

While all of us who have had the rare fortune of evaluating bee trees know that they come in a broad range of sizes and configurations, it is generally true that they are more thermally massive and less passively ventilated than the typical Langstroth set-up.

So it might be possible that tight clustering for long periods of time has not been a ubiquitous feature for honey bees over most of their history.

In the 8th chapter of his original 1853 Edition of 'The Hive and the Honey Bee', the good Reverend Langstroth had this to say:

"I recommend, however, a construction which, although somewhat more costly at first, is yet much cheaper in the end. Such is the passion of the American people for cheapness in the first cost of an article, even at the evident expense of dearness in the end, that many, I doubt not, will continue to lodge their bees in thin hives in spite of their conviction of the folly of doing..."

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