Agreed, our winters are tame compared to Scotland. Another part of my reasoning on insulation was a speaker our local association had a year or two ago. He was a canadian sideliner and he said that his winters were -30 degrees and lower for months, he used no insulation and had wooden hives but his biggest concern was keeeping hives clear underneath and entrance to maintain airflow as snow was in excess of 2 feet deep. He actually said that the most important thing was to have healthy bees with queens from the locality that were used to the climatic conditions.
2ft of snow is quite a lot of insulation