In fact, I am constantly told (by American Expats working in Russia) that hursh winters Russia is famous of... well, not true. And that Moscow in terms of weather conditions is very much like Chikago, in fact the latter is worse... I don`t know if that`s true, but that`s what they say...
As for hives, yes I`ll use some sort of "fallout shelter" but I`ll also be leaving my bees lots of food supplies in October, verbatim - honey. Books say that as long as they have hun, frost can`t kill them.