Finally a warm day to go and check on my hives (10 C. , but still have a foot of snow on the ground though). Now I just need some help interpreting the findings. My back yard hive had about a thousand bees between the insulated cover and the inner cover. Presumably they pack that space full for insulation? When I opened up the inner cover all I could see was bees. The only spaces that were not filled were between the outer frames and the hive box. Does this mean that the cluster is sandwiched up against the top cover and perhaps only a couple of inches deep, or is there just a tonne of bees in this hive? Everything is so propolised together that I did not try a heft test on the hive, but I plan on starting some feeding soon. They went into the winter with with 100lbs of honey, but that was almost five months ago.