> I'm running negative (no supplement) 
> and positive (patties of natural pollen 
> and sugar) controls.

My understanding is that natural pollen, if not kept in a freezer until the
patties are made, deteriorates and can degrade to a worse food source than
the supplements.  Lloyd Spear may have hard numbers on this, I don't.

> The differences in groups at midwinter is striking!

As for the supplements, many people, myself included, have compared them on
far larger numbers of hives than 162 every year for decades.  The
differences are stark, but publication of the rankings has been viewed as
"difficult" and "problematic".  Printing the unvarnished truth would leave
one open to charges of "product disparagement", and could result in a
protracted fight in court to show that one's findings were valid and
unbiased.  Bad feelings all around.  To date, all supplements I've seen
helped quite a bit versus a hive fed no supplements or trapped pollen, so
they are all "good", but some can be "much better" than others.

Here's one thing I did find - the specific ingredients are far less
important than the technology used to grind them.  There is a stark inverse
correlation between particle size and utilization by the bees.  The bees
can't handle large particles very easily, so the finest grind wins, every
time.  The grind was not consistent year to year or batch to batch for any
product it seems, up through and including 2006, when I last looked at this.


This is the same exact factor that doomed the "Dowda  Method" (Dump-N-Brush)
powdered sugar attempt to treat varroa to being completely ineffective - too
few of the particles of the proper small size to clog varroa tarsal pads (I
remember 5 to 15 microns, I'm not sure) were created using the
"dump-n-brush" approach.  That's why the baby powder dispenser worked so
much better, as it consistently created the fine, cigarette-smoke-like cloud
of consistently fine particles, although it did require the beekeeper to
pull frames and poof both sides of each.  Much better knockdown rates, much
better temporary control.

These days, I have the luxury of viewing pollen supplement as "hamburger
helper", as with far fewer hives, each and every one can be lavished with
lots of real pollen, and just some supplement to do what the word says
-"supplement" the likely-to-be nutritionally incomplete mix of pollen I
collected.

And almonds aren't the "acid test" for bees, apples are. :)  
Almonds are a great food source for bees, and hives can be placed with the
knowledge that they will come back heavier than they were when they arrived.
Modern hybrid apples are such a lousy food source, the growers have to cut
the understory if they want the bees to even look at the trees, and bees can
actually approach starvation while working apples.  I had hopes that the
resurrection of the heirloom varieties would solve this problem, but they
made it worse, as each heirloom type bloomed at slightly different times,
which required a whole new way of working out deployment time for "an
orchard".  Did I mention that apples don't pay anywhere near much as
almonds, and grow mostly on steep muddy slopes up at elevations that tend to
be far colder than the valley below?  I don't think that there is any other
crop where one is often forced to go clear snow away from the entrances of
hives placed for pollination.  By comparison, almond orchards appear to have
been designed by Frederick Law Olmsted with roads put in by Robert Moses -
they even have DITCHED and CROWNED roadbeds!  I expect the almond board will
put in stoplights and bike lanes soon!  

Just joking, but real beekeepers feed their bees pollen patties while
wearing parkas and standing in a foot of snow.

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Sent from my not-so smartphone.
My typo rate may vary
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