This is our first year beekeeping. We believe we had a strong hive going into winter. Two deep boxes pretty well full. Several weeks ago we were suspecting that the hive may have died as we were not seeing any activity even on slightly warmer days. Didn't hear any noise from outside and didn't see any bees in top box with a quick peek (there is capped honey in top box though). We didn't want to open it up any further though. Haven't seen any large numbers of dead bees outside the hive. In the last couple of days it has warmed up considerably from the cold spell we've been having and there has been quite a bit of activity coming in and out of the hive. We are now unsure if there is any way to tell if our hive is alive or we're being robbed (we only have one hive but have a close neighbor with several hives). We did notice some bees flying around the sides or trying to crawl in the back but unsure if they are just smaller numbers of our bees doing orientation flights (or something else done in spring) or robber bees. Obviously if our bees are dead you wouldn't see the typical defending activity that goes along with robbing a hive that's alive. There also are quite a few bees but not as many as we were seeing during orientation during summer or in some robbing videos posted on youtube. We've done some searching online but are having a hard time finding clarification to where we're at. We know what normal behavior is during summer but haven't gone through winter/spring with the bees yet. Any insight would be much appreciated. Thanks!