VFTs love direct sun but they don’t handle temps above 90ºF too well. The roots are especially sensitive to these warm temps. Sunlight on dark colored pots aggravates the problem by speeding up the heating of the VFTs soil. I have my plants on the east side of my house now, where they receive direct sun from 8:OOam to 1:3Opm and full shade from 1:3Opm on. They are doing much better now than they were when I had them on the west side. They got more light but there, but they also suffered from the higher heat that comes with the afternoon sun. I leave them outside all day long. You should be able to do the same thing except on the hottest days when you may have to move them into the shade or bring them inside to a nice sunny window if they won’t get too hot there.
As for covering your VFT, you can eliminate it altogether. They can handle very low humidity if the VFTs soil is kept moist. The best way to do this is to set them in trays that are slightly bigger in diameter than the plant pot and keep about a ½" of purified water in the tray. My plants experience very low humidity daily during the summer and because of the humidity from evaporating water in the tray and the moisture in the soil they are growing well. Also,
don’t remove the cover all at once, especially on new plants. Do it gradually over many days so the leaves get a chance to adapt to the dryer air outside the dome.
Carnivorous plants won’t starve if the don’t catch an insect. They can photosynthesize food just like any other plant. Bugs are like little fertilizer pills though, and give the plant a little boost to make up for nutrients that are missing from their soil. Keep in mind that the traps will only close 4 to 5 times before they won’t close anymore. After this they will still photosynthesize until they eventually die. At which time you can either leave the dead trap alone until the whole leaf dies or trim the dead part of the leaf or the dead trap off.
Dormancy should last 3 to 4 months. If your temps don’t get into the 40° to 55°F during the winter then you should put them into the fridge for their dormancy. If you use the
feature above, you will find a lot of threads about dormancy from last year. If you haven't checked out the Plant Care link at top of the page then you should look at that page now also. There is also Barry Rice's FAQ pages that are very informative on all aspects of growing VFTs. Here's his VFT dormancy FAQ pages:
VFT Dormancy methods.
