What does it mean when you see hundreds of bee abdomens sticking out of a comb in a hive that contains no honey?

I’ve always believed it meant the bees starved, but Tom Seeley says I’m dead wrong. His comment was forwarded to me, “Rusty is mistaken.  Worker bees deep in cells, with heads down, are a normal part of a winter cluster.  As I explained before, this is what the bees do to keep the insulating mantle of the cluster continuous, even where a comb slices through it. Yes, when a colony starves, we find lots of bees deep in cells, but they are not a sign of starvation.”

I understand that heater bees warm the cluster in winter. Jurgen Tautz in his book “The Buzz about Bees” uses thermal images to show bees warming brood by pressing their thoraces onto brood comb. Some bees also climb head first into empty cells in the brood nest, which radiates head into the surrounding brood. Tautz also talks about the utility having some empty cells in a brood nest in order to facilitate this kind of warming.

But the photograph that began this discussion shows a solid circle of dead bees, with only their abdomens protruding from the cells. There was no brood, no sign of honey, and no signs of robbing. Is it accurate to say that the circle of head-down dead bees is not a sign of starvation but only a sign they were trying to stay warm? What am I missing here?

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