Hi,

> Perhaps wintering some with acrylic inner covers and some without will 
tell.  
>

I have already done that with the BetterBee nuc, water either way.

I have not done this with the hand made ones as I have already previously mentioned, and as I have previously mentioned I have only wintered one year with acrylic on the BetterBee nuc but I have used the and wintered with them several years. The first years I used them was without the acrylic cover and there was water ponding. It was this that inspired me to build the hand made Polynuc. For whatever reason water condensates and this results in water dripping down to collect in the bottom. I believe that the water ponding in the bottom can only compounds the condensation, whether or not this is essentially a problem or not. At this point I do not care how the water gets there so I am thinking the screened bottom will allow the water to drain and this will hopefully help alleviate compounding condensation. I do like the fact that I was finally able to successfully winter nucs using a Polystyrene nuc, I would just like to improve results even further with them. I have thought of maybe building a telescoping wooden insulated top but will wait until I see the result of the simple changes I made. The BetterBee nuc already proved that it works, I just want a little better results. I really like using the acrylic inner cover because it comes off with ease and allows me to do quick hive welfare checks without removing their cover in colder weather. I have not had any trouble with them getting burr comb built under them and I attribute this to have good top bee space tolerances.

 . ..   Keith Malone, Chugiak, Alaska USA, http://www.cer.org/,
c(((([ , Apiarian, http://takeoff.to/alaskahoney/,
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/akbeekeepers/ ,
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Norlandbeekeepers/ ,
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ApiarianBreedersGuild/

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