open bottom boards

[bmacior]

Just received my bee culture magazine with an article about dead air space and open bottom boards.  Guess I have some questions.
1. Being a new beek, I don't recognize the name of the author of the article, John G Hoffman. 
2. He talks about using a 1/2" sreen mesh.  Wouldn't that contribute to robbing situations?  How do the bees protect such a large open area? 
3. Which brings up the question, slatted racks use bee space, so wouldn't they also provide opportunity for robbing?
4. I guess I don't understand why closing off the entrance makes a better dead air space seeing how the entrance is also at the bottom.
5. Is anybody using this method?
 :? :? :?

[TwT]

I know one person that use only 1/4 hardware cloth for SBB because they say there have been time's where new queen's returns to the smell of the hive and tries to enter from the screen underneath and they find her under the hive and she been there some times for days and sometime fro a week or two ( they have found bee's drawing comb about 12" long under the screen). (hive count around 450)

 and I also know one that uses no bottom board at all, the hives sit plywood with a 1" spacers under each front corner letting the front be tilted up, he has also had some hives sitting on 2 4x4's with no bottom board and no problems for him either (my Dad)  (hive count 8 ) (except he said yellow jackets appeared more but with strong hive no problems and the hives stayed like this for 2 years, needless to say he put those on plywood also like the others.

[BeeHopper]

Just received my bee culture magazine with an article about dead air space and open bottom boards.  Guess I have some questions.
1. Being a new beek, I don't recognize the name of the author of the article, John G Hoffman. 
2. He talks about using a 1/2" sreen mesh.  Wouldn't that contribute to robbing situations?  How do the bees protect such a large open area? 
3. Which brings up the question, slatted racks use bee space, so wouldn't they also provide opportunity for robbing?
4. I guess I don't understand why closing off the entrance makes a better dead air space seeing how the entrance is also at the bottom.
5. Is anybody using this method?
 :? :? :?

I use a Screened Slatted Rack ( that's what I call it ) as a bottom component of my hives which have a Hive Top Entrance. The only drawback to this is I remove the SSR to dump out the junk that accumulates on the screen once a year. There is a member here who use a completely open bottom with a slatted rack between the ground and the Deeps with success. I don't use that method because I prefer not to.  :-*

[Robo]

I experimented with bottomless hives at one time.
http://forum.beemaster.com/index.php/topic,528.0.html

But have more recently gone back to solid bottom boards which is working well for me.
http://forum.beemaster.com/index.php/topic,16851.0.html

[bmacior]

The posts were interesting reading.  Thank you. :)