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. **************************************************** * General Information About BEE-L is available at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/default.htm * ****************************************************