Yes, I can write all the books I want, people still don't, won't get it. Simply because they have it in their mind, that so is so, no other way will prove to them diferent.
I will tell you this, if snow melts from your covers, your bees are uncomfortable, not happy at all. The only way, if they survive, is that you are lucky, cause you live in the area that has no real winter.
(About the snow melting? C'mon lady, you like to be the sharpest pencil around? Read again, think what I said? But, don't mind me, read the books, read what others had said about the so called heat in the hive?)
Such thinking is pure illusion! Fulling self and others!
Please, don't just read and turn things around, to suit your cause and than rush and tear my house down.
I am the first man to admit that I don't know much about bees. (more I learn less I know)
But, I forgot more than others will ever know.
All that aside, I do know how to keep them alive in the hardest winters, one can find anywhere that bees fly and man keeps them. I also know that when bees die, where they shouldn't, all things being equal? Than something is wrong and that such end is not fault of varroa, or fault of some 'entrance' that can't get past someones craw?
Varoa, a parasite, they have no intention of killing their host. Their only intention is peaceful coexistence. But, when the colony is dead, it is also the easiest thing to tell, if it was varroa?
Dead bees, dead Varroa. As simple as that.
The floor of the hive should be full of dead Varroa, cause they can't go anywhere. Dead host, dead parasite!
Hive, where snow is melting from the roof is sure sign that something is alive in there, sure. But that is all. Being alive is one - being alive, comfortable, dry and content - that is something totally diferent.
Sorry lady, if my reply this time don't suit you either?
I have a nasty habit to tell it the way it is and the way I see it. My advanced years and 56 years with bees... That all put together, that gives me some rights. I ran thousands of hives - for others, plus mine and I can count on fingers of my hand, for all the years when hives were lost - besides those over which human hand has no control. (Failing, lost queen, bear, wind knocks them over and the like...)
And I admit, that with the coming of Varroa in 1986, I gave it all up, because I refused to treat my bees with all them poisons. At the same time also, the Lord gave me the sign to quit - with broken back. But I always had a few hives to keep me company, cause without bees, life is not worth living.
I have been to the corner and back, more times than most and I have no intention on locking horns with those who refuse to entertain, even for a minute, something diferent than what their minds are set on.
Yes, chimney-effect is exactly what one should have in the hive. But, chimney effect is exactly that what the word implies. That means; bottom entrance and top entrance are aligned, are on the same side of the hive. Than the chimney effect acts close to the wall, by air ever so gently drawing up and out, it gently pulls with it the moisture from the hive and your bees are dry and happy and alive come Spring.
If chimney effect is not reached, than one has a 'cross-draft' which blows across the cluster and bees suffer and that is when the cold will kill them. One should not have cross-draft, even in the Summer. The only good point having it is; varroa likes it!
Cold... lady? Does cold scare you so much? If you don't like it, keep warm, but don't make your bees suffer, cause to me it looks like you are doing your darnest to have them nice and warm, heee, hee...
Thinking wrongly, though, that they are nice and warm.
How worm is that? Why don't you and I stop fooling around? My hive tops don't loose no snow, by melt from the heat below. (heat from the cluster NOT the hive) Yours do! So, who got warmth and who is loosing it?
Let the readers of this tread decide. . .
I can pull any book you would point out to me, from my library - or yours, if you have one, and in it find the right ansver. Since you don't believe what I have to say? Perhaps you would believe the words of others?
There is cold and then there is COLD! One does not - the other does kill them.
I will put it this way: If bees have been prepared for winter the right way - cold will NOT kill them! Most, I am itching to say all, most are lost to some sort of human error!
Bees that live under the top that melts its snow, they are only by a small stroke of luck still alive. (Why? I mentioned it several times already.)
One more thing: Go look on Internet, Google beekeepers across Manitoba, Alberta, etc...
(It has been mentioned on this forum already, many a time, through the years...)
There they bury their bees - thousands of hives - under the snow and they stay buried for months. They are fine in the Spring though.
But, what do I know lady? You got over 9 thousand posts? I don't...
All I wanted to do is to give the gent here a piece of advice, cause he needs it. He asked for it and he got it.
(Like it or not)
How and what he plans to do with it, that is totally his doing.
But, to my delight, I see that he is a man I thought he is. He cares about bees. He cares about the craft, the art of keeping bees and he most likely won't see a repeat of situation that has befallen him this time. I also see that he will get nucs from Myron, Fatbeeman? Myron has good bees and the man knows his bees, his craft and how to work with them properly.
I have no intent on forcing nothing on nobody. I only give advice which has been gathered with over tvo hundred years of family tradition by keeping bees, on two continents and tried by me and others. Others way better than me, for the last 60 years or so, here and in Europe.
I can go on and on, cause there are more questions aching to be answered and answered right. But, I don't want to bore nobody to sleep either, heeee, heee ;)
Best regards and good luck to all...
Trot