Fall feeding
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Why fall is different from spring
Spring syrup stimulates a colony to build. Fall syrup is stores, and the colony has to process and cap it before the weather stops them. That is work, and it takes time you may not have.
Bees feed on stored honey through fall, winter and spring, whenever forage is not available. What you are doing in September is making sure that store is big enough.
Two parts sugar to one part water
Heavy syrup, at two to one, is the fall ratio. It is closer to finished stores than the thin 1:1 spring mix, so the colony has less water to drive off and the job takes less of the time that is running out.
When it is too late
That is the real deadline, and it moves with your climate rather than with the calendar. The question to answer is how many warm days are left, not what the date is.
How much
Enough to reach the weight the colony needs, which is the question with three different published answers. Weigh the hive rather than counting frames, feed if it is light, and err heavy if your winter is longer than the source you are reading was written for.
Take the harvest decision in that order too. What you have to sell is what is left after the colony is provisioned.
What you are actually feeding for
Two different jobs, and confusing them is why feeding advice contradicts itself.
Weight. A colony short of stores needs calories banked before it clusters. That is what heavy fall syrup is for, and it has a deadline: bees must reduce and cap it before it is too cold to process, or you have given them a box of dilute syrup that can ferment.
Winter bees. The bees raised in late summer and early fall are physiologically different from summer bees: fat-bodied, long-lived, and the ones that have to survive until spring. They need protein, which means pollen or a substitute, not sugar. A colony with plenty of syrup and no pollen coming in can still go into winter with the wrong bees.
This is why mite control and fall feeding are the same conversation. Mites damage exactly that generation, and no amount of syrup compensates.
Feeding without starting a war
Fall is dearth, and open feeding or a leaky feeder in a yard triggers robbing that can destroy the weak colony you were trying to help.
Feed inside the hive, at dusk, with the entrance reduced, and do not spill. Feed every colony in the yard at once rather than singling one out. If robbing starts, stop feeding and close things down before resuming.