> Would help if the formula was made public. Allen, you said "Megabee has little, if anything, to offer that other feeds do not." Does that mean that you know the formula? 

Nope.  I am just going by what my friends tell me.  They make up many custom formulas for beekeepers and MegaBee is not the hit we had expected.  

> There is also the issue of particle size. Dr Wardell found that it was critical for bee digestion. MegaBee is specially milled to get to that size. So even if it contained exactly the same ingredients as another formula, those ingredients might be more nutritionally available to bees by virtue of the smaller particle size.

Well, maybe this is the story today, but at the time, the issue was getting it to suspend in a liquid and that was where the bulk of the time,  effort and expense went.  As far as the value (relative cost effectiveness) as a diet, I don't really know.

To repeat, MegaBee was designed as a* liquid* feed, and perhaps secondarily a dust, but because I kept insisting that the market for liquid feeds is very limited and that the handling of liquids is problematic compared to solids, the product was finally made into patties. There is much more to the story.

What are we talking about here?  MegaBee as a liquid, or MegaBee as a patty?

In my opinion, the particle size is not particularly important in patties.  I could be proven wrong, but I doubt it.
---

Changing the subject away from MegaBee for moment and speaking more generally...

Patty sales have become an attractive business and many people are trying to make a buck off the beekeeper by promoting secret formulas and special processes.  Aspirants to the business find they cannot compete producing a generic patty following the traditional formulas -- that niche is occupied by a very efficient low-cost producer --  so they try to find a niche by saying that the tried and true formula is not as good as whatever they dream up.

I know because I can number three proprietary commercial products that came about as a direct result of my enquiries and discussions a decade or so back and the efforts made by the Southern Alberta Beekeepers.  Our philosophy in approaching academics and others regarding improving the feed recipes of the time was that the work should be 'open source' and financed by beekeepers, with the results of the work being freely promulgated.  This approach did not suit the people we talked to, and they went off and developed recipes they figured they could keep secret and make money with.  

The problem for beekeepers for each of these feeds is to discover which claims are are valid and _whether the magical qualities claimed by some will actually manifest themselves in the real world and return the cost to the beekeeper with a bonus for the risk and effort_.

My personal opinion -- not confirmed by actual tests -- is that little has been accomplished in the past decade except to add cost to a basic formula that works and confuse beekeepers with hype.

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