Yes, we have made patties like that ourselves in the past, a lot of messy work, but in the end the ones given it and the ones not given it were indistinguishable. Similar performance, similar harvest.
The Australians have a special difficulty as they are sometimes working crops that did not evolve in a symbiotic relationship with honeybees. They DO produce pollen (how else would their seeds be produced) but its just not nutritious enough for the honeybee which is non native. I have seen pictures of the problem and had the odd Aussie or two here seasonally, and the name they have for the problem is 'the muck'. Looks like foulbrood at times but its a nutrition issue.
The thread was started about feeding candipolline in winter, and as you will already have sussed, I don't consider it a wise investment at all. The added proteins are only minor, and they will put waste in the bees gut, so I see it........as a mid winter feed......to be overly costly and adds another risk factor. Outwith the winter period it will, at the very worst, do little harm.
The irradiated pollen I can find is not from the UK. Its Spanish. NEVER use Spanish pollen in patties unless its irradiated. There is a very high risk of AFB contamination with it so don't be tempted by the much lower price. The last offer I got was for dried (not irradiated) Spanish pollen at just below £5 per kg (but was in tonne lots in drums).
Importing pollen from outside the EU is a problematical activity. I know of one case where a guy in England had a couple of tonnes of patties refused entry from the USA due to the lack of a certificate for the pollen ingredient. Have bought from Mann Lake myself in the past (two of their pollen free versions) , and the bees took it well........or so it seemed as you could see some of the product in the pollen arc. (Apart from one spring we used it mainly when installing packages or shook swarms in dearth periods.)
However..... one time we used the patties in an apiary we placed in a disused silage pit, so all nice bare concrete. The pollen patties were going down well, but actually most of it was in tiny bits and was all over the base of the silage pit. Most of the apparently consumed patties were actually being removed by the bees and dumped outside.
It was an interesting spot, as it also showed up very clearly how many corpses the bees drag out and drop in the grass. It looked like there had been spray damage, but actually all was normal and the bees prospered there.
