As my name has been quoted in this thread I will repeat what WE do, and it may or may not suit others. Take it or leave it as you wish.
We believe in feeding to the optimum rather than the maximum. We proved by trial in the past, and sometime error at other times too, that colonies fed to FULL do not winter as well as colonies fed less full, leaving them enough space to raise a cycle of autumn brood.
We never find bees in OUR climate (which is eastern Scotland plus the satellite unit at Hereford/Cirencester) NEEDING to have more than 14Kg of stores in winter, which is a very convenient measure of 10 litres of invert syrup.
With very few exceptions we winter on single deeps, applies equally to wooden hives and polys, to BS sizes as well as Langstroth.
We NEVER use dummy boards, indeed have burned lots and lots of those in the past.
We PREFER to leave a poly feeder on above the nest in wooden hives for the winter, but a correctly fed and formatted colony in wood should winter perfectly well anyway.
It is our belief that over feeding hampers late brood rearing in the limited space we give them resulting in less young bees and a smaller colony in spring. They also cluster more tightly if there is a correct amount of open comb in the central area of the cluster.
It is getting marginal now for syrup feeding. We are still doing it in the poly hives and the good ones have taken over half their full feed since Saturday. We stopped making them draw foundation two to three weeks ago. We have only 120 or so our t of nearly 3000 still left to get their full feed and all will be done by tomorrow night. Having to rely on the hired hands to do it as I crocked myself badly a week or so back.
Ivy? Well we never get it here but not so in the Hereford area especially. If the bees get any we really hope they eat it all as it is a big problem if it becomes crystallised and also if any ends by being moved upstairs in spring. It taints the harvest giving it an unappealing smell which makes bulk buyers rather reluctant to take the barrels containing it and can depress the price. For the dual reasons of not wanting it and breathing space in our schedules, we prefer not to move the southern bees back onto site until after a date when the ivy is long gone.
ps...added later
Even those colonies actually underfed, then topped up with fondant from some time in winter onwards, arrived in spring stronger than the utterly stuffed ones. If you are on doubles or 'one and a half's then the feeding rules are a bit different.
