No. The 5 deeps picture is at end of June. Peaking brood burst and beginning of first flow. I am standardized on deeps for everything. In the picture is bottom deep brood box, qe, 4 deep honey supers.
I winter the outdoor hives in 2 deeps.
I winter the indoor hives in single deep. These are in climate controlled building Oct 20 through to March 20.
For the Penthouse, I will try to describe how it ended up as is right now and pretty much considered done until it gets insulated in about 2 weeks.
Bottom strong hive is in 2 deeps. Standard bottom board with entrance blocked off all but 2" wide opening. Standard inner cover on top of the second box, 1/2" wide notch facing down, centre hole (feed hole) in the cover is blocked by a piece of 1/8" ply stapled over it. The upper hive, the Penthouse, is on top of that inner cover. The openings of the bottom board and the upper are on same side of the hive. Call it South facing, for now.
The penthouse is in 1 deep. The bottom board is an inner cover with the notch facing up and cut out to a bigger notch of 1.5" wide. The centre hole (feed hole) is blocked by a piece of 1/8" ply stapled over it. This is placed directly on top of the inverted inner cover of the bottom hive. The opening is facing opposite of the bottom hive. Call it North facing, for now. Then there is the single deep. On top of the deep is another inner cover, the 1/2" wide notch facing down and also North facing. The centre hole is blocked by 1/8" ply. On top of it all is 5" of foam board insulation and finally the lid. The whole thing, sides but not the bottom, is then covered in panels of 1" foam board insulation and finally is wrapped by building paper. There will be 2" diameter cutouts in the foam where each of the lower and upper entrances of both hives.
Although the two inner covers back2back are thicker at 5/8" rather than a 1/8" ply divider would be, the fact that the entire hive is going to be quite well insulated the extra thickness should be fine for plenty of the lower heat to emanate through. I am also well past being fed up and done building more equipment for this year. Have expanded the number of colonies in this set by 3 and, and well ... I'm done building for 2018! Actually, secretly, that is one reason why I wanted to do this in the first place. I did not want to be building any more boards, pallets, lids. The 3 inner covers are what I had in hand at the time that weather was cooperative to get this done. Hope it works!
I will try to remember to snap a picture next time I am out there.
Yes, I could have just put the single into the wintering building along with the others. However, I do want to try this as an experiment and see what happens. Granted there are many many many other factors that will determine if a hive will survive the winter or not. I believe those to be mitigated. The penthouse hive is healthy, disease free, plenty of stores, young prolific queen. Just low on overall population at the moment on the cusp of winter. Without a thermal boost from the colony below, they are doomed to contract and die off as the cold hits and they are forced to abandon brood to cluster more tightly. They do have a brood cycle, some mature capped brood, about to pop which along with some heat from below should get them over the hump. I will monitor the entrance activity throughout the winter and should be able to tell if going well or if it is a failure within the first month of true cold.
It is a fair amount of work to wrap them properly. Is why I do only a few that way and the rest go inside. I find that despite the inside hives having a much easier wintering period, the outdoor hives (if they survive) tend to be more "hardened" to the large spring temperature fluctuations we can have here. The outdoor wintered seem to be more robust and suffer fewer setbacks when the overnight temperatures drop substantially. I haven't taken specific notes and data on this, so call it conjecture - which alot of good beekeeping is anyways isn't it?