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Just found your question, I live in Michigan and was tired of loosing my hives to the bitter cold winters so over the covid winter I built 2 horizontal hives.  I didn't get bees into them until mid June 2020 and was somewhat worried that they wouldn't be ready for winter with their stores. I didn't take anything off the hives last year and I put 2" styrofoam on the follower boards for insulation and in the spring time when I opened them up they were in great shape.  Then I decided to build an Insulated Layens hive and made my deep Langstroth frames using dove tails so I could take them apart for extraction ( I have a Langstroth extractor). So I put a swarm in it that I caught in the spring and they are doing fantastic.  I'm in the process of building an insulated horizontal hive for standard deep Langstroth frames to put another swarm I caught.  It should be interesting to see how they all come through the winter....  Bottom line no matter what you hear don't be afraid to experiment, I love the horizontal hives and will not go back to the vertical hives........  Good Luck...