Humans prefer fake treatments that cause pain, because you "know they're working".
This cold storage is a significant added cost and used only in hot areas . It minimizes varroa since the mites can only breed in hives with brood. It's done in spring when otherwise the bees might swarm. Failing to insulate hives in cold areas will require more feeding to maintain colony size over winter, and that would be financially dumb.
The writer seems like an expert, but makes weird assumptions. Commercial beekeepers are very different (and care much more about costs and output) than hobbyists. Some hobbyists are no doubt incompetent (but caring), and some commercial operations are completely uncaring (but rarely incompetent).
You don't have to feed them pollen if they don't have brood, but they still try to keep themselves above the 50F storage temp so they need honey/syrup. If they were outside pollinating at spring temps (in a warm area), they wouldn't need any feeding at all.
It's a cost add in the warm climes so the only reason I can see to do it is for mite treatment.
Sometimes it seems that this kind of philosophical narratives are anchored in XVII century science. Everything with pain receptors feels pain. Period. Animals evolved this structures exclusively to feeling pain. Because this is a very positive trait if you want to survive.
Insects and other invertebrates are known to have pain receptors since the XX century (Yes, clams feel pain, and roundworms feel pain also). This is not new ground breaking science at all. What is new is using this to move forward the agenda of the cruelty animal crew.
I'm not against building better beehives, but we should focus, --laser focus--, our attention and most of all our scarce resources investing into much more urgent problems with insect species losing of habitat, being poisoned and facing extinction.
Because money is scarce on conservation and much more scarce on invertebrate conservation; and "give me money or this bee will die frozen two days before to just die of old age and be replaced by other bee" is a ridiculous problem.
Unfortunately, insects can feel pain actually is a new concept. I don't know why, but there are people hope to replacing pig with insect, because "insects can't feel pain".
Even if we don't view ourselves as humans in the most favorable light, even if consider the possibility that our tendencies might be more egotistical and destructive than we realize.
In such a scenario, deliberately causing stress generation after generation in a species crucial to our well-being and, perhaps, survival is not advisable. It raises the question: What could go wrong?
It would be good to have evidence of that, though? Your takeaway is, at best, an assertion of the article/study. One that is really only based on thermal properties of the hive. Not on comparing survival rates. Or, really, any measure of agitation or other measure that we would use to measure distress?
