Jody, nope. Pretty sure I lost 8 of them, the 9th one is going well, with 6 frames of bees. It is my nuc that I made from my old Carniolan colony. It has always been a strong strain of bee. This winter survivor is one of the nucs I made last summer, because they were in swarm preparation mode. Survivor stock, without a doubt.
Now there may be a chance that some of the other colonies made it, but they would all have to be living in the bottom deep. Which is extremely unlikely, because when I looked in I could see NO bees. I will be performing an indepth examination soon to determine what happened.
If I were to cut down the boxes, they would still be deeps, but only 8 frames. I have no desire to use mediums, all my frames are deep frames. I do have about 4 shallow honey supers though.
Slaphead, thanks for those tips, maybe one day my Husband might/would find some time to do some work on building boxes. One can never know what the future holds. You typed a lengthy post to me, thank you.
I suspect that I am going to be totally downsizing the number of colonies I want to keep though. I am thinking that I would like to only have about 4 at the maximum. Nine colonies was alot for me to feel totally comfortable working with -- I don't want to work as hard as I have in my old life in my new life coming. I want less work, more time for playing, like riding my nightster with my Husband on is fatboy!!! Holy smoking smoke, I can't wait for spring. Every time I see that commercial of that girl riding her bike down the city streets, proclaiming how wonderful it is to ride and be smoke free, I thank my lucky stars that I quit that hideous habit, and I can ride my bike down those city streets, proclaiming to the world, "you can do it too"!!! Have that most wonderful and beautifully awesome day, life, great health. Cindi