I live in Atlantic Canada. The winter 19-20 I insulated the walls of the hives with roof tar paper and 1″ white styrofoam. The top had only the styrofoam. I kept the inner cover on. I reduced the entrance to 1″. No upper hole/gap for ventilation. Each hive had a deep brood supper and a deep honey supper. The honey suppers had at the best 6 or 7 capped honey frames. In the spring I found lot of condensation, even mold in the hive. However the colonies were very strong and had eaten only several honey frames from the upper supper. And not many were dead in front of the hive through the winter. No need to say that spring cleaning come the bees cleaned all the mold. The 2020 summer I collected an average of 100 ponds of honey per hive. And the bees entered this winter with the upper honey supper packed at 100%. And I assume some honey in the brood supper as well. I built them cozies: outer walls insulated with 2″ of polyester fiber batting and a larger roof insulated with all the polyester fiber I could find in some old pillows, at least 5″ thick and fluffy. The bottom board is approximately insulated with a 1″ styrofoam board. Probably there are some gaps. The inner cover stayed in place covered by a 1/4″ clean plywood. No vents, actually I screwed this plywood to the inner cover. When it is cold outside, I remove the roof, squeeze my hand between the pillow filling and the plywood top and find it reasonably dry and warm. Actually quite warm right above the oval opening in the inner cover. The roof developed some mold from some condensation. Probably next year I will rebuild it as a gable instead of flat and add two gable vents (holes) for cross ventilation. I don’t have many dead bees in front of the hives. The temperatures are now up and down below freezing. Monday was a warmer day, and the bees started to bring a little bit of pollen (alder? black willow?) and clean the hives. They didn’t bring out many dead bees, just a few. Nor they try to vent at the hive entrance. I am looking forward to seeing if they did well this winter but it is too early now. I hope that that warm top spot on the plywood didn’t lie to me. And I will see what warm (I think) moisture did to them. It cannot be worse than the winter before.

Jon, I love innovation! Your hives sound GREAT. In our area many beekeepers are inventing hives that are better for bees, and having success with it!

You know, I don’t know enough about R values to say. I do know that I’m so disgusted with the lack of insulation in our flimsy wooden hives that I’ve gotten rid of all but one and put my bees in skeps this year–five of them! From my reading, skeps are the next best thing to log hives for bees. I can’t lift logs, so I’ll have to settle for second best for my bees!

Kami, I’ve drilled upper entrances into all my hives. On a lower, reduced entrance in winter, bees can die and clog it up. Then the hive does indeed go crazy!

Hi Julia: I have two top bar hives that I won’t use until I can get insulation panels on them. The more I read about hives, the more I feel we are all missing the insulation boat here. According to research that’s been done, log hives are the most well insulated, followed by polystyrene hives and straw skeps (which are both the same for insulation). At the bottom are all of our wooden hives, which offer no insulation. AND–insulation is actually more important in the summer, which is so counter-intuitive!