In the far north here (central MN) we routinely see dinks like you describe in spring. this has been 
my  experience and others for decades. 

what is common with these dinks is a large number of dead bees accumulating on the snow 
though out the winter and sometimes but not always on the bottom board.  with a remaining 
cluster of anywhere from a couple of hundred bees to maybe 2 frames or so of bees. most have 
queens,  some do not and are queenless.

the other common variable sometimes associated with these dinks is heavy poop staining on the 
out side box or on the hive wrap and ground around the hives.

obviously we see colder temps here then in MO where Bob is wriiting from. 

without speculating on whether this is CCD or not, I'm just saying this is a common spring find 
here in the north. 

i had record winter losses last spring - this year we have normal losses around 5-8%. we've had 30 
plus nights below zero this winter and a long winter since Dec 1st as compared to the last 6 years.  

after last winters experience i checked my hives routinely this winter every 3 weeks or so when we 
had a warm spell. i had a first wave of losses in december presumably the weak or mite damaged 
and this is typical from my experience.

 then no more additional losses until march. march losses appeared to be mostly on those 
colonies which started laying brood early which was followed by a below zero snap and the cluster 
starved out because they did not want to abandon brood and move up or sideways in the stack. 

so far I feel blessed to have normal winter losses and a large number of nucs and hives to work 
with if it ever warms up beyond the  teens to 40s. 

i must say that the 44 9 frame russian nucs I wintered had the least number of dead bees on the 
ground and they hardly used any feed all winter. this was my first winter with pure russians.  they 
look like a very tough bee and ideal for my climate. 

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