Well.... I would say your numbers are a bit small to be making sweeping conclusions for future massive purchases for apiary management.  :) But for sure queens from southern generations shipped in a package can do very well.  

There is a SARE grant that compared overwintering success for packages using the in-package queen, vs requeening with a local queen, vs a local nuc.  They found that 20% of packages were ready for spring come the following year, vs 60% of requeened packages and local nucs.

To my thinking, there are 2 variables at work here.  One is that a package situation is inherently stressful and makes supercedure more likely, which means for a significant percent of bees that poor virgin daughter won't come back and the colony will be up a creek without a paddle - both due to beekeeper ignorance and lack of additional resources to raise another queen.

The second variable is the lifeway of the bee.  Some colonies take quarts of feed at a time - and do not store it.  I've seen this happen.  They make bees as though they live in the South.  There is some sort of switch for honey storage which is not triggered, or not well triggered - and we get poor winter survival.  We potentially get great stock for building early for, say, almonds, and great stock for making lots of bees for packages... but I suspect this no-store phenotype is pretty rare compared to the issues with queen supercedure in packages.  

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