> What is the list's thoughts / experiences 
> with microflora boosters beeing touted 
> by the supplement people?

About the same as the fellow selling dog sweaters in sizes for St Bernards -
the sweater is not needed and will overheat the dog at anything warmer than
-20F, you have to wrestle the dog to get it on, and the dog thinks that
wrestling is great fun, so you end up with the dog breaking your arm by
mistake, and feeling very bad about hurting his master.

I've been sent several unsolicited samples by earnest and hopeful vendors.
I've tried them, and not seen any measurable difference in side-by-side
colonies in terms of any tangible metric.
So for sample sizes of a handful of hives, it looks like extra cost and
extra work for no perceptible advantage.

If these are fed when bees can fly, they can be described much the same as
the various "bee teas" favored by biodynamic (Stienerism) beekeepers -
"Mostly Harmless".  (If fed as part of winter stores, they are yet more
ingestible "ash", and can lead to problems if the bees do not have the
opportunity for flights to void wastes, of course.) 

There has been talk of some of the herbicides preventing "bee bread" from
properly fermenting, these are the only bacteria that one seems to need to
worry about.  My understanding is that some growers (almonds as an example)
have no problem with spraying herbicides while bees are pollinating, and
beekeepers put up with this.  My contracts forbade the grower's spray rig to
move at all for any reason while my bees were in his orchard.

Bee have simple diets, and they ignore pollen supplement patties for fresh
pollen, no matter how low-quality, low-protein that fresh pollen might be,
so there really is not a good way to reliably supplement the pollen, and
keep them supplied with "a variety of pollen" when they are working
monocultures.  This is why colonies placed on apples, despite being provided
with large and lovingly-made lavish pollen patties mixed from fresh-frozen
pollen, will ignore the patties on all but rainy days - they have no way to
judge pollen quality.  The good news is that bad weather is part of the
usual pattern in apples and stone fruit work, so the patties do tend to
help, as the bees can easily run out of fresh pollen in any rain scenario.

TLDR: I wouldn't even deploy the stuff if it was free.

That said, there are a large number of beekeepers who persist in providing
their bees with things like "landing boards", or even worse, hive stands
with sloped landing board extensions, as if bees could not fly straight into
and out of the entrance, or use the front wall of the hive if not inclined
to fly in/out the entrance.  This sort of sentimentality is the basis for
many extra-cost items that beekeepers buy out of a desire to "care for"
their bees.   So, there likely is a market for these supplements, as it
makes the beekeeper feel better or more virtuous. 

I am not immune from buying things the bees don't need.  I am required by
the very reasonable and minimal regulations for bees in NYC to "provide a
water source".  My bees have no interest in any water source I provide, even
when salt is added, and fitted with a "solar fountain" or ultrasonic
vaporizer to create some mist.  What they clearly prefer is the HVAC
condenser run-off, every roof of anything larger than a tenement has one
somewhere, so they can rotate between 3 or 4 nearby units on adjacent
rooftops to harvest a very reliable water supply.  So my "water sources" are
for show, to simply comply with a regulation.

A student in my bee classes cared so much for the welfare of his bees, he
built a lily pond in an open-topped 55-gallon drum for his bees, and they
liked and used it, as his area is a residential part of Queens, lacking
rooftop industrial-grade HVAC units.  But he got cited with a violation by
the very same health dept that requires the water source be provided for
bees.  He was cited for having "standing water", a mosquito-breeding /
West-Nile Virus issue.  So, he had to show the administrative law judge his
receipt for the mosquito fish that also lived in the drum with the lily
pads, and show them a copy of the Cornell U ag-extension bulletin on the
subject of lily ponds, aerators, and mosquito fish.  A Three Stooges film
festival of a hearing.

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