Since the only reason to boil the water is to dissolve the sugar you can
actually prepare the sugar water so that your cooling down time is
dramatically reduced. The trick I use to cut down on cooling time is that I
only heat up enough water needed to dissolve the sugar which is about 1/4 of
the amount of water. If I'm doing a cup I heat up about 2 oz until it just
starts to simmer and I dissolve the sugar in that. Then I add the dissolved
sugar water to the rest of the water which *almost* instantly cools the
mixture. How long it actually takes to fully cool depends on how hot you
let the water get before adding the sugar. The only thing you need to be
careful about since you are working with an increased amount of sugar to
water ratio is to not scorch the sugar. If you cut the heat/take the pot
off of the burner right before adding the sugar and then stir vigorously
this will prevent the sugar from scorching and you can get food to your
hummers faster.

For your hummingbirds that overwinter, once the first frost hits up your
concentration from 4 parts water to 1 part sugar to 3 parts water to 1 part
sugar. This provides more calories and helps to ward off starvation when
natural resources are scarce. Although nectar that hummingbirds will feed
on can be as high as 1:1, you don't want to go that high since that will
risk dehydration. The 3:1 ratio gives them increased energy without
exposing them to the danger of dehydration. Just be sure to go back to the
4:1 in the Spring.
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