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Feeding by hand works great for gerbils and hamsters normally.  It's an ideal way to make the tamest young usually and they quickly realize skin gets you no food even if it smells like food so most (not all) even begin to watch for food smelling hands versus food containing hands.  Of course it's never smart to hand mix the food and then go play with the rodents but it's not a death sentence with any of mine.  I don't place hamsters very high but they still have some basic learning ability.  Hamsters don't usually bite out of food alone and many that do bite will pass by food to go for skin specifically.  They've already got poor handling or a poor temperament.  Either way they truly can just hate people.  Especially once they are mature I've found it's best to just get out the gloves.  I've tried and if you are lacking both genetics and positive early handling they are forever violent bastards that no amount of time retrains.  There's 2 places I would buy winter whites or robos from if I wanted hamsters again and that's it.  The rest within range are too contaminated with poor genetics to risk it.  Gerbils are also often so-so but usually even less than stellar genetics can be mostly overcome by removing them from the cage to a playpen daily and feeding treats if started young enough.  Removing to another location is key because rodents become aggressive to things reaching in their cage easily.  Older gerbils may still never rehabilitate and generally even if you tame formerly aggressive gerbils or hamsters poor genetics results in increased breeding difficulties with neurotic or neglectful mothers and pups damaged by both nature and nurture to overcome in yet another generation.   Reason I don't have hamsters anymore and went 4hrs for my current gerbils (twice so I could get more breeding stock).  Various local populations of the very small species have just lost all good genetics for temperament and recovery without outside stock is not worth the effort.