What we call Winter ended quite a while ago. These past few days it's been near 90F and not much below 50F at night. Tomorrow it's expected to cool off some and we may get even more rain. Wildflowers have started to kick in, lots of pollen and enough nectar to keep the brood nests expanding.
Anyway, despite continuously feeding throughout Fall and Winter, now Spring, most hives are still less than one full 8-frame medium super (four to six medium frames), though, about six hives are beginning to be crowded even in two 8-frame medium supers. I've been carefully harvesting frames of sealed brood to populate two and three-frame mating nucs. I really think the queen is the lynchpin of the colony. Though I can't think of an easy way to test this hypothesis, I'm fairly confident that a good queen is the most important factor to having a strong colony.