monitoring status of active malwares on honeypots

Hi,

With respect to the malwares and their activity, we observe;

1. Those which are actively seeing hitting the hosts are active (trying
to infect the machines)
2. Those which are dormant and for a long period of time, how can we
conclude a particular malware/virus is not active any more? Basically we
should not worry about it more. Is there any way we can conclude about
the same.

Is there any good resource/URL one can visit to read more about this
process?
I would be grateful if I can get answers or some discussions pertaining
to the same.

regards,
Mayank