I have a single hive in a long langstroth setup. This is the first year I had my bees and overwintered them in Iowa.
I saw the bees coming out for a cleansing flight in full force early February, the hive looked strong and many bees were out in 50F+ weather. Then I had to go out of town for a fair amount of time and came back in early March. It was below freezing for a week or 2 when I got back and I didn't check my bees. The last few days were warm an I noticed no bees coming out for cleansing flight so I went to check. I found a small huddle of about 50 bees struggling and the queen was off by herself barely moving. Figuring the hive was done for, I put them in a glass bottle with some patty (ultrabee, canalo oil, and 2:1 sugar syrup) for my own observation and brought them inside. Some heat and munching on the patty and they were all active and queen was moving around being attended by her workers.
[EDIT: how they died]
I am not sure why the hive died, but I am guessing they ate themselves into a corner and starved. They started winter closer to one side of the hive, and looking back I should have arranged equal honey frames on both sides. I estimate they had total 80 lbs of honey (8 deep frames full), the frames they had huddled on were empty, but they had 5 frames of honey untouched on the otherside of the hive. There wasn't too many bees head first in the comb, which I thought indicated starvation, most were just dead at the bottom of the hive.
Their numbers are so small that they would not be able to start a new hive or warm the brood enough. I don't have other hives to borrow bees from, and I can only keep one hive from local ordinances.
My question is if there is any salvaging the queen, or restarting the hive? What could I do in this situation?