Jen, Honey stores for winter. Or in a better term the hive configuration and the amount of stored honey we want in the hive by the time the weather turns cold and the bees stop bringing in nectar or taking syrup.
Most of us have about 2 months to get to this point from now the middle of August. What happens between now and when the hives are to go into winter depends on late summer and the fall flows. If the colony is not going to reach the desired weight for winter, feeding becomes necessary.
I would think you would like your winter hive configuration either 2 deeps, a deep and a medium, or 3 mediums. The winter stores you ideally want need to be enough stores to get the colony from the end of the fall flow to the spring pollen and nectar flows. Some of this time can be supplemented with the feeding of sugar syrups so the critical stores are the amount of honey needed between when the bees quite taking syrup and when the weather breaks so syrup can be fed in the spring.
This amount of time will change depending on where you live. So the winter honey requirement will be different depending on where you live. In Northern California the critical winter stores requirement will be 30 to 40 lb's which is about 1 medium super of stores.
Now that we have a target winter stores we can feed or let the fall flow be packed in the upper brood super till our winter weight is reached. For you Jen because of the uncertainty of a fall flow I would feed 1:1 syrup to the middle of September unless a flow starts and then stop feeding to stimulate the bees in raising of winter bees. After mid September I would switch to 2:1 syrup to encourage the bees to store and ripen the syrup for winter stores until the desired winter stores in the hives is reached.
