That's what I was thinking too Baker, Perry posted a few pics of buried hives.
MudSongs, Perry lives on the US east coast where the snow can get several feet deep. I remember a particularly deep snow photo of his hives, they were buried about 2 feet. His hives had been solidly buried a couple of weeks or more. He decided to dig down to the top of one hive enough to find the front of the hive where the inner cover notch was located. That's all he wanted to do was open up some air flow, too dangerous to see if the bees were still alive.
The good news is, he found that the warmth from each hive had kept the snow melted back about 6 inches or more from the sides of the hives, much like an air pocket all the way around the hive. What he also noticed is that there was plenty of bee poop all over the melted walls and some down the front of the hive. Which means that the bees had enough room to go out of the hive and poop. Plus the air pocket seemed to give them enough air flow.
This gave Perry much relief and he didn't excavate the rest of his 50 hives.
Maybe you could dig down to one of your hives, see what you find, take some photo's and share with us. I live in upper California US, we can get that much snow here as well.