I tried to overwinter a mating nuc this year for the first time. I put it inside a full size hive and padded with hessian sacking. But then the winter was too warm and they starved – too much flying, too little forage. They had filled the feed section with brace comb in autumn so it looked like they had plenty and I could not put more in for fear of drowning / burying bees on that comb.
Anyway, at the weekend I started the cleaning up task, and was quite sad to find the queen sat almost completely alone on a mini frame 🙁