>> 1)  How was the "homebrew" pollen supplement made with a fine enough 
>> "grind" to be comparable to the professionally-ground/mixed products?

> They used off-the-shelf products, no special grinding.

>>> Gustav >>> The amount of consumption is directly dependent on the amount and fineness of powdered sugar or the sweetness of the syrup.

My experience aligns with Gustav's, and also with Gordy Wardell's, so why then is getting a sufficiently fine grind not critical to the "homebrew" mix?  Several of us listened to Gordy (MegaBee creator) talking about the trials and tribulations of grinding for an entire lunch hour during the USDA Beltsville CCD meetings. The very specialized capital equipment required to get a fine "grind" was the key factor in his subsequent selection of a licensee/manufacturer.  

But now a beekeeper "homebrew" mix does as well with zero fine grinding?  This is VERY surprising, as extraordinary as it would be for my 1952 MG TD to lap a field of modern stockcars at Daytona Raceway.

>> 2)  How much of these pollen supplements were actually consumed vs 
>> taken out with the trash?

> Other than the Healthy Bee, very little evidence of much being discarded.

How was this measured and documented?  It was a significant factor with pollen supplements in the 1990s-2000s.  Again, a lot of this had to do with insufficient grinding.

>> While it should be obvious, it bears noting that the impact of 
>> including some real pollen seems to overwhelm the other factors, (see 
>> "Global" and "Homebrew").

> Not the way that I interpreted our findings at all!

I do not want to seem to be putting Randy "on the spot" about the data collected, as opposed to his specific hands-on work with the hives.  

But if these are "our findings", please offer a "Consumer Reports Ratings" here, as a once-over seems to indicate that the "Global" and "Homebrew" were overall "winners", and the unique difference between them and everything else was the inclusion of real pollen.  This makes intuitive sense to me, as try as we might, the best a pollen supplement might do is "come close" to a SINGLE type of pollen, when it is well-known that bees do best when simultaneously utilizing a variety of different pollens.  

But if the "off the shelf" "homebrew" mix works as well or better than the best efforts of the bee supply companies, one needs to clearly understand the particle-size issue for the homebrew mix, as this key factor seems to imply that "homebrew" was nothing but a slightly modified commercial mix, perhaps a commercial mix to which real pollen had been added.  There's nothing wrong with any of this, of course, other than perhaps providing more support for the antiquated and quaint view that real pollen is an important part of a well-rounded bee diet.

An unabashed plug for Lloyd Spear's Sundance pollen traps is in order here, as traps I bought decades ago are still valuable assets, and are the sole reason I have a freezer with sufficient fresh-frozen pollen for both my retail store customers and the spring needs of my hives.  Soon it will be time to get some pollen patties on my hives, hence my interest in this dataset.

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