Thanks for the details, Paul. The location of the mold clarifies where the condensation occurs. Your thick inners and tele covers sound like a great idea! And thanks so much for your observation on the open-air cluster in cold weather, since it refutes the hypothesis that colonies can't survive with too much winter ventilation (although I'd like to see more replicates). As Paul notes, " The most obvious thing about these places is that their climates have literally nothing in common." The above is what makes a biologist want to attempt to tease out the physics involved, so as to come up with guidelines that can be appropriately applied respective to the expected climatic conditions. -- Randy Oliver Grass Valley, CA www.ScientificBeekeeping.com *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html