Bernhard Mobus was a great beekeeper with a good scientific mind He was the beekeeping advisor for scotland based at the College of Agriculture of the North of Scotland at Aberdeen. Sadly no longer with us. He made a lot of sense and could communicate his ideas to other beekeepers in a way that some could learn from.
Its clear he made some great observations. After surveying many many papers on this subject I can say his understanding of heat transfer was no worse than many of his colleagues in the world of Apidology and entomology. E.E. Southwick from the papers I read had the best grasp. But even he made a basic mistake in measuring the conductance of honeycomb. He measured the conductance with the comb horizontal. This change of orientation would be considered invalid by any academic in thermal engineering. In fact the changes in heat transfer due the orientation of honeycombs (man made) are a subject for a number of engineering papers.
I could give you paper after paper by other authors that have such and worse flaws. Some these undermine some really good research results.
A classic example is Kraus, B., & Velthuis, H. H. W. (1997). where the statements about when and where you can find high humidity in an occupied cavity or hive consigned the work to being not mainstream for varroa research.
The most common fault is not measuring the conductance of the insulated hive when what you trying to see what the effect of the insulation is.
The next is putting holes in the insulation and the cavity. This introduces all sorts of variablilty in the heat loss.
I have learned to look very very closely at the experimental methods used by biology academics when they make physical heat transfer measurements and at the conclusions they draw.
Southwick, E. E. (1985). Thermal conductivity of wax comb and its effect on heat balance in colonial honey bees (Apis mellifera L.). Experientia, 41(11), 1486–1487. article.
http://doi.org/10.1007/BF01950051
Kraus, B., & Velthuis, H. H. W. (1997). High humidity in the honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) brood nest limits reproduction of the parasitic mite Varroa jacobsoni Oud. Naturwissenschaften, 84(5), 217–218.
http://doi.org/10.1007/s001140050382
