Over the past maybe 6 years I have tried several methods from sugar on
newspaper to bulk fondant to making my own patties to for the past 4 years
using winter patties from the big bee stores...

I found that the dry sugar, the fondant, and homemade patties I did dried
out very hard and quick and didn't seem to do much for the bees.

When I switched to the pre-made winter patties my overwintering of light
hives improved and the bees boomed in the spring  (often more than I
wanted).

I observed that often the clusters would move up in the box not long after
putting the patties on as in Virginia we have a couple mild days allowing
this movement, so that they stayed in full contact with the patties. After
seeing this happen many times (I use to have 100 hives which was fine for
me as a hobby but with young children I reduce to now just 25 to 30) I
decided to reduce from double deeps to deep and a medium to force the
cluster to stay in contact as I noticed the ones that moved up always led
the pack out of spring...

The previous 2 years I was a lazy beekeeper and didn't feed up the hives as
I should have so some younger made hives had little to no honey stored and
by keeping patties on the hives all winter they did surprisingly survive on
just winter patties alone.. not the strongest but they recovered and did
fine.

So I have used winter patties as supplemental, emergency, and primary feed
and now simply keep patties on the hives from end of November till about
mid March in my central va area as "cheap insurance".

Yes it's all antidotal but for about $15 a hive on my small hobby it's
money well spent... doesn't take much honey production from a living hive
compared to a dead hive to pay $15 back...

My two cents....

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