There have also been other "citizen science" SARE and club based projects done on small samples (50 and under) in Virginia and Maine also showing colonies started from nucs and/or requeened packages outperformed colonies started from packages in terms of winter survival.
Someone posted that packages come pristine. Not in our experience. This past season packages came complete with small hive beetle, virgin queens, drone laying queens, and laying workers. Our failure rate in our student class was about 50% the first month. This was a bit extreme due to Southern weather conditions and weather conditions in the mid Atlantic- but stil- not fun! Starting with packages is far from trouble free. Thankfully we have an active nuc program.
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