Of course it does! We even love yankees. In fact, we love all polite people who care about bees in a sensible way! 
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Yesā¦fiddle fiddle fiddle!!!
Letās go back to my fan analogy as it is actually very much the same thing. If you randomly inserted a fan into my system it MIGHT help. But odds are that it wonātā¦
If youāre gonna try it, put a screen over the hole where the fan will be. The bees will propolize it shut it they donāt need that much air flow. Thatās what they did when I tried screened inner covers.
This is how I plan on ventilating my hive- with mesh covered holes in positions where the bees have access and can decide what they like.
The whole fan thing is just an idea- and if I implemented it - it would be filtered- and a very small fan. I understand all the arguments against it- I am just curious at this stageā¦
@Michael_Bush how about if you you inserted that fan- not randomly- but in accordance with what the bees want? Assuming you can figure that out? 
My new hive design has an insulated roof with an air space between the roof and the cover boards. I was thinking of using a fan to aerate that space- drawing fresh air up through the hive- (the air inlets at the bottom of the hive would have cloth filters to prevent dust being drawn in) and venting out of the roof vent. I am thinking a really tiny fan powered by a tiny solar panel- and only in use in the hottest months. Itās just an idea. I plan to make at least 3 identical hives in the coming weeks and I would only test a gimmick like this beside a hive without the gimmick.
Having read and appreciating your opionons concerning ventilation: I take it you think the product @bigB linked is probably crap- and the claims they make dubious? http://www.beecoolventilators.com15
However I have done more research about heating the hives in winter- and that seems a no brainer to me. If you can add a few degrees of heat to a hive in cold weather easily- I canāt see how it could be a bad thing for the bees? Whether itās insulation, passive solar- or something a little more high tech.
I have come up with a way to turn my flow frames into heat sinksā¦ and I will be incorporating that into one of my upcoming hives.
I was just letting you know that such a product exists. I can not vouch for the product or promised benefits.
My hive is on a tin roof in Western Australia where temperatures get over 40ĀŗC. There is a large jacaranda tree that shades it in the middle of the day. It gets morning and mid afternoon-evening sun.
Iām pretty happy with my approach of draping a soaking wet towel over the side of the hive. The gabled roof lets the towel hang away from the wall of the hive so the hive doesnāt get wet and it doesnāt depress the hive temperature. I only do it on hot days, >35ĀŗC.
Itās main function is probably keeping the wall and roof of the hive shaded, but the evaporation should keep cool air on that side of the hive.
It has pretty much eliminated bearding on hot days in excess of 40ĀŗC. Before I did it or on days I forget the front of the hive is covered with bees. However, my hive is on top of my house and I only have one so Iām able to rewet it each day easily.
Next summer I will probably mess about with just shading with a towel vs shading with a wet towel to see if it makes a difference.
I would question the attitude that you should just let the bees alone to do their own thing. Weāre putting them in artificial hives with thin walls, meaning they have to work harder to heat or cool the hive. The comments above re insulating the hive make plenty of sense to me and I would steer clear of the fan.
yeah- I pretty much understood that- and I donāt vouch for it either
they say there is a 30-50% honey increase- but then- they would say that wouldnāt they? Caveat Emptorā¦
But still- I am going to think about it- and possibly test it side by side with a control- and come up with my own truly independent findings. Or not.
When Perth gets super hot like that- it is also often super dry isnāt it? I was there once in the middle of summer and although the temps were similar to what we get in Adelaide- the sun felt particularly brutal- everything was baked dry.
The coolgardie safe I linked to at the top of this thread- seems like it would be a perfect solution for just these types of heat wave situations in low humidity environments for fully exposed hives. Even though the bees can cope with 40c- I feel pretty sure they would much prefer 35c? Just like us. The Coolgardie is the same as your wet towel- only more efficient with a metal heat exchanger.
The jacaranda right by the hive sounds very good and lucky- supposedly it make very tasty honey? Our honey was super tasty and distinctive- people at the bee society said they thought maybe is was jacaranda- though it canāt have been as they werenāt flowering at the time and there arenāt many near my mums hive. Mum thinks it was her āflame vineā āorange trumpet vineā. does anyone know these and know if they are good for bees? In all around 10 people brought different honey for sampling- and only Mumās Flow honey created a buzz- and a small crowd. It really is the best honey i have eaten in a long time. We are very curious to see if we get a similar flavour next year.
@JeffH posted an old 60ās video which clearly demonstrated in a hive how bees circulate air throughout, canāt remember where it was now
City of the Bees- had a super cool looking title. Yes- I meant to watch that and will - right now! google is my friend.
Thatās it! 
I remember you suggesting last year PIR or a Poly. At this stage though am going with timber, I can make it, costs less & well Iām just not a great fan of plastics, where there are other choices. I understand bees accept plastic & it has a precedent, itās an aesthetic choice I suppose. Would be interesting to compare, perhaps results of wooden insulated hive & āstraightā Langstroth, with your wooden boxes & poly? Different climate & forage will alter though results though too.
Its on the limits of what Iād be comfortable with āfiddlingā with them. Other than this I intend to go with natural beekeeping practices.
Just thinking , itās a long time since seen any pics of your hives/bees, have you harvested this year or wrong time?
Yep you are rightā¦ Perth has very dry heat for the most part. Must help the bees manage the temp more easily.
Iām not sure that going for a metal heat exchange is a great moveā¦ you dont get much control on how much cooling it supplies and it would impact air flow in the hive. Thats why iām happier with the towel from the gabled roof overhang.
The other advantage of helping them keep the hive cool is that they need less water for air conditioning. This should reduce being a nuisance at neighbours water sources and help them devote more time to nectar and pollen.
Iām pretty sure i got honey last year that was almost 100% jacaranda. There are loads across perth and they all flower within a few weeks of eachother and stay in blossom for about 1 month. It was before i had the flow hiveā¦ so it was crush and strain. The honey is incredibly pale and very sweet. Personally i preferred the harvests i got later in the season but being urban it is harder to define the source.
The problem is that filling gaps is more stimulated by light coming in than by a grand plan for ventilation. In other words those in charge of filling all the cracks and gaps are not the same ones in charge of ventilation. But at least they would have a choiceā¦
Assuming you could figure that out. Iāve been trying to figure it out for 42 years now and I think Iāve only scratched the surface. I have more questions about it than when I started, but only a few answersā¦ I think I have a pretty good grasp of the physics (gas laws and thermodynamics were covered in my physics class as well as my anatomy and physiology classes and my chemistry classes) and Iāve worked outside a good chunk of my life and Iāve never lived in a house with central AC. I have lived in a house with a swamp cooler and several with whole house attic fans. What I keep learning is that it is very complicated what they do to adjust to whatever they have to work with. The one constant is that virtually all the time they are evaporating moisture and moving it out of the hive and they are making minute adjustments constantly to the ventilation. The brood nest is a constant 93 F. The rest of the hive never gets above 1003 F or so on a really really hot day in the sun. The cluster in the winter if there is brood is 93 F. The cluster in the winter if there is no brood is about 70 F or so. These are very fixed goals and they seldom miss them by more than a degree or so. Adding any fan to the equation, in my opinion, is bound to make things more difficult for the bees.
We have had a very wet summer and honey is only just coming inā¦though I did take one super off in spring. I am making soft set with that.
Most of my colonies are new with only two production colonies in full flow.
These two have three supers on them three of the others have one each and the rest are nucs or only just transferred to big hives. Supers will be off in three/four weeks so fingers crossed
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You could design it so it doesnāt impact air or moisture flow in the hive. If it was set up on a metal hive roof- where the outside metal of the roof is the heat exchanger. So itās job would be to cool the hive itself from the outside- not the air inside. But the hot air inside would contact the cooled roof and be cooledā¦ I am not sure how efficient these types of evaporative coolers are but I imagine it would be hard to cool too much on a 40c day? You could easily control it by controlling how much water dripped over your hessianā¦
Heck i think Iāll whip one up- and patent it- I already thought of my advertising blurb: āincrease honey production by 60 to 600%!*ā
- actual results may vary.
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Fingers crossed then for maybe a small but exquisite harvest Hope you donāt think am being too nosy is there a particular reason why you have mostly new colonies? Have you more hives than you had last year? is soft set the same as creamed honey?
Just wanted to add, that I asked because I value your experience &resulting input on the forum.
Well you know Michael 42 is the magic number: maybe youāll crack it this yearš! Maybe Iāll stumble right onto it in my first season- as I am 42 years old- a ha.
" The one constant is that virtually all the time they are evaporating moisture and moving it out of the hive"
This makes a lot of sense- the bees will always be producing moisture and it always has to get out somehow.
" The cluster in the winter if there is no brood is about 70 F or so."
Is it common for there to be periods where there is no brood? In mid-winter? How long do these periods typically last?
My concern with actively cooling the hive surface is that changing the temperature of the inner surface of the hive will impact air movement and moisture movement. Just like a fan, the change in air movement could work against the bees.
The dew point is the absolute theoretical limit of how much cooling you can get from evaporating moisture. It also happens to be the point at which humidity hits 100%. The bees in the hive will have a much higher moisture content in the air than outside (from evaporating water from nectar, breathing and potentially doing their own evaporative cooling). This humid air inside the hive will have a much higher dew point than outside. If this humid air hits a surface inside the hive anywhere close to the external dew point you will get significant condensation on the surface and water dripping in the hive.