I'm in Kansas. I feed some 1:1 sugar syrup in the early spring to simulate a nectar flow. That encourages the queen to ramp up her egg laying. We usually do this in late February/March. Our colonies can run out of food and many are lost due to starvation in March. You have to be careful to not over feed to the point where the bees plug up the brood nest with sugar syrup. That defeats the purpose. I have heard seasoned beekeepers say they prefer to feed the bees slowly in the spring. I assume that means doing similar to what yes2matt has described.
I do have one colony I still am feeding 1:1 syrup. That's a split I did this spring and I am asking them to draw comb in the 2nd brood box. I checked yesterday and the queen is laying eggs in the new comb as fast as they can produce it.
Good points here. Don't want to overfeed so that they backfill. Just a tiny trickle.
Also if you stimulate growth into an artificial flow, you are as a steward committing to keep the artificially oversized colony fed adequately until the real flow starts. Don't trick them into growing then starve them! Which is why I don't do it much now, too much work to keep them fed for two months.
Sent from my SM-J737P using Tapatalk