In my opinion, No matter what you do feed them and feed them as long as they dont backfill their broodnest and get honey bound and as long as you have undrawn comb i feed but i guess im too generous to my bees i like to have live bees in the spring. My goal for a second year hive is to have a booming hive going into the flow those of you who are cheap and dont want to feed or have that natural mentality will be buying packages or the hives that live wont have the reserves they need to build themselves up before the honey flow, and they will have minimal nectar stored after the flow and everyone will be crying the bees made no honey. Lets remember the more workers the more honey no workers no honey its that simple numbers make honey if you buy a package in spring and expect a huge honey surplus you will be sadly disapointed. Or those who put one jar of syrup on the bees and walk away and come back in fall to find no comb drawn out and no honey reserves and say hmmm what happened to all the honey they made/? did the flow pan out to make enuff wax and honey or did u just assume they would?? Just like anything in life you get out what you put into it whether it bee raising your children or putting money into investments or putting reserves on your hive. A serious beekeeper who loves bees and honey will treat those girls in that hive wisely and i todays beekeeping you have to do what it takes to make them survive. When it comes time to raise queens i evaluate in fall what i removed in honey from each hive before i feed any syrup to see who made the stores of honey, pollen,and who comes out of winter with a nice pattern of brood as well as tempermeant lastly thats how i raise my bees but im no expert at this hobby by any means but its a goal of mine to be the best that i can bee at sustainability . From what i read from the experts a nuc going into the fall should have 5 frames of drawn comb, bees and 4 and a half frames of pollen and honey stores to get threw winter and bee able to build up in the early spring. Chris