Tom Barrett asks about feeding bees for the winter and how to arrange the hive
so as to avoid 'isolation starvation'.  We nearly all keep our bees in an
artificial way and we get what we select for through artificial rather than
natural selection although Darwinian principles will still apply.
If, through your management practices, including winter feeding, you select
for bees that survive with your your system you will end up ONLY ( or nearly
only, you cannot eliminate recessive genes) with bees that need your system.
I am assuming that you are relying on your local bees rather than importing
queens from afar as often practiced in America.  If you do the latter you are
relying on the selection priorities of the breeder.  Overwintering in a cold
climate on minimum stores may not be high on his list of priorities - he wants
his customers to keep coming back.
In our maritime temperate climate on the eastern side of the Atlantic the bees
often do not cease brood rearing in winter.  They will not leave brood to get
cold in order to move onto new stores.  I have very occasionally found a
colony dead from starvation  with ample stores in the hive, even on the same
comb as the dead bees but separated by only a few inches.
One trick I have learned is to over winter my bees the warm way with the
frames parallel with the front of the hive.  The reason for this is that bees
tend to store their honey at the rear of the hive, away from the entrance.
Through the winter, besides moving up, thay also move back through their
stores.  The cold way they may cut themselves off from half of their stores.
You may have gathered that I do not routinely feed my bees for the winter
although I will do so if I feel that particular hives need mollycoddling or if
there is some particularly cheap sugar.  It is very seldom that I lose a hive
through starvation.  I try to take my main honey crop late after the bees have
arranged their winter stores in the single brood box in the way that THEY
want.  What I take is what the bees leave as surplus to their requirements.
The philosophy is to work with the bees rather than to pillage them.
This system works for me and my bees but then I don't have to live off my
bees.
Chris Slade