[Oldtimer]

It's very surprising after 4 days with no food that there was not a thick carpet of dead bees on the bottom of the package.

It's influenced by temperature, how much they had in their stomachs to start with, etc, but as a general rule of thumb you would expect to see dead bees starting to pile up in a package by the 48 hour mark and by 4 days most of them would be dead or very close to it. By some circumstance you got lucky. Transit temperatures and handling must have been very close to ideal, and my guess would be that by some circumstance they started out with more food in their stomachs than typical package bees do.

Different for a swarm, they start out prepared for a possible long journey and carrying as much food as they can.

 

[Oldtimer]

Dead bees pack down tight, an inch could be quite a few bees.

However sounds like you might still may have enough bees to survive, do you have other hives?

Also, all it will cost you to talk to the supplier is the time it takes you to write an email. I would, worst can happen is you get ignored but that leaves you no worse off then you are now. I would just tell your story plus attach a photo of the lid with the dent, even though you opened the tin, shouldn't be an issue.

An honorable vender may send you another package with a couple pounds of bees, no queen, which you could dump into the hive to help them out.