[taxonomy]

The idea is to keep the top warm to prevent it passing through the dew point. Condensing on the walls is fine because the water will not drip on the cluster. The heat rises in the insulated space, the inner cover stays dry because it doesn't reach dew point. Meanwhile the relatively cooler walls do pass through dew point, the water condenses there and runs down the sides. The water is, therefore available to the bees but doesn't harm them.

This was discussed in American Bee Journal back in 2020 in an article called The Condensing Colony. It's also discussed here in a good video by one of the founders.

I think you could achieve similar results for less money. That's well and good but I don't have a lot of time to mess around with things. I'm considering buying some. I'm trying to keep my apiary to 5 hives and a couple of nucs because that's the level I find enjoyable. This doesn't wind up as a huge expense at that level. It's surely cheaper than golf or motorcycles.

 

[taxonomy]

I'm using hive hugger in MA, 6A.

Some notes about heavily insulated Hive Hugger hives:

It attenuates the 24 hour variation. The day to day run is flatter. It's a really stable enviroment for the bees.
Smaller hives have a higher 24 hour variability. They don't necessarily run cooler but they do bounce around more and respond more to external temps.
I took a couple of small hives into the winter and they're doing really well. It's encouraging to see how warm they run even though the were nuc size going in.
They use hardly any honey. It's hard to tell what they're using vs. margin of error week to week. It looks like 8lbs for big hives and 2 lbs for small hives per month.