I had a starter package I installed early April, just before temperature
dropped to low 20's.  It stayed cold for a couple days.  I had a boardman
feeder on the front but the bees clustered up & away from it & died.  I came
back 3 days later & they were all dead.  I dumped them all out on the ground
and disassembled the hive.  The queen cage (which still had 3-4 dead workers
in it) I took home & put on the kitchen counter. A couple hours later my
8-year-old daughter noticed that they were alive!.  I figured it must have
been from the candy cork in there.
 
Just for kicks, I jumped in the car with my daughter and went back to the
site.  We scooped up as many of the dead bees as we could find (maybe half
the 3-pound package) and dumped them back in the shipping container.  I took
them home and doused them with sugar syrup.  Sure enough, within a few hours
a few hundred of them were walking around in there.  I dumped the in front of
another starter hive in hopes that some of them were still alive.
 
I just wish I'd thought to douse them the first night in the hive --  maybe
they all would have made it.
Eugene Makovec
Kirkwood, MO