Fortunately I've had the privilege to be a beekeeper since 1966, and having long before and since been a son whose parents believed in a quasi-nomadic way of life, relocating our family to distant points within the U.S.A., frequently. I attended kindergarden at three different schools, and grade school in about six distinct schools, but high school in as many as five different, distinct disparate locations. Some of these relocations were near each other, others were quite distant. From Redmond, Washington to Valparaiso, Florida; and from Waynesboro, Virginia to Newport Beach, California - and many places in-between. Most of these locations I was either able to relocate my two hives of bees, along with me, or obtain some at my new locations. Then, when I was seventeen, after just finishing my senior year of high school - I joined the U.S. Navy, which facilitated my continuing this nomadic lifestyle. And I continued in the Navy for the next thirteen years.
I apologize for the above lengthy discourse, but I needed to qualify what I am going to say, next:
In most of the various locations, where I've kept bees, honey flows were such that bees would almost never ignore an exposed or artificial source of sugar, even sugar syrup. However, here in Tucson, Arizona for more than twenty years now, I've watched as colonies have ignored even combs of honey that were left exposed and unguarded during our mesquite honey flow. They would still take sugar syrup, fed inside, though slowly and sporadically.
Beekeeping is truly a location dependent activity. Location and many other factors always changing, sometimes in subtle ways, how the bees do what bees do.