Here is issue 138 no. 8
He built a styrofoam box using 30 mm stock and used it to enclose a colony so that there was an entrance corresponding to the Langstroth hive entrance and placed the colony on a scale. There were heavy losses of bees from this insulated hive any time a cleansing flight occurred. Relatively minor losses were recorded from other colonies sans insulation. Food consumption in the hive was 4.17 kg which corresponds with a colony that produced little or no brood over the winter. This is about half the food consumption of normal colonies over the 126 day measuring period. He spends quite a few sentences discussing the extremely low food consumption of the insulated hive. He relates the insulated hive in 1976/1977 to the carefully measured and weighed bees in the previous issue. One conclusion he makes and produces very good support for is that there is an optimum size colony for overwintering and colonies larger than or smaller than optimum are at a disadvantage. This optimum colony has between 10,000 and 15,000 bees.
He then reviews The Hive and The Honeybee article 1975 edition by Furgala where he describes winter cluster dynamics. This part would be particularly interesting as it discusses heat conductance as temperature goes up and down and the cluster expands or contracts as needed to adapt to the temperature. Then he discusses work by Gontarski and Altmann who measured CO2 produced by bees under highly controlled conditions. They proved that bees in the center of the cluster are very low metabolizers with little CO2 produced but relatively high evaporation of H2O. Bees on the outside of the cluster in the "shell" are high metabolizers consuming honey and producing most of the CO2." One conclusion is worth repeating. "When clustering is brought about by onset of colder weather, each bee in the cluster will generate heat in direct proportion to its heat loss - which is in inverse proportion to its own temperature experience." In other words, the colder the bee gets, the more heat it produces to keep warm. A warm bee in the center of the cluster has to do very little work while the bees on the outside of the cluster have to work extra hard to stay warm.
At this point he discusses a relationship between water produced by the high metabolizing outer shell bees vs the low metabolizing inner cluster bees. There is a cline such that inner cluster bees do not have enough water. He then mentions the well documented behavior of bees moving from the inner cluster to the shell and shows that they do so to increase their metabolism thus producing much needed water while bees from the shell move to the cluster interior to dry out after accumulating too much water. He relates this dynamic to the failure of super colonies which have too many bees in the interior cluster and therefore are chronically short of water. Then he correlates with the highly insulated hive by showing that it keeps the bees from having to metabolize honey which produces an artificial shortage of water in the cluster. He wraps up the section discussing small colonies that have to expend too much effort staying warm and accumulate too much water plus waste in the bowel eventually leading to severe dysentery.
The conclusion is a discussion of thirst and availability of water as a primary consideration in good wintering.
