Pollination season is one of the busiest, most resource-intensive periods of the year. The best commercial beekeepers don’t just manage the chaos—they plan ahead, streamline movement, and use their data to avoid unnecessary labour and costs.

1. Monitor Hive Strength Early—and at Scale

(A best practice made easier with Nectar)

Instead of waiting until the last minute to learn whether their bees meet contract requirements, entering pollination season with a clear, operation-wide understanding of hive strength can make it easier to project what you’ll be able to deliver.

With Nectar, beekeepers can quickly visualize:

1. Hive strength across their entire operation—down to every yard—broken out by strong, medium, and weak categories.  

   

2. The strength of each of their individual yards, broken down by strong, medium, and weak. 

   

3. Yards broken down by average Frames of Bees

   

Operators like Matt Stayers rely on this view to prepare for grade contracts, where payment is based on frames of bees and capped at 12 frames. Because many of his strongest hives run 16–17 frames, accurate grading lets him strategically pair these colonies with 10-frame hives on the same pallet—still averaging 12 frames and maximizing payout.

Grade contracts in his operation pay $230 per hive, compared to $205 for eight-frame contracts, making precise strength data a meaningful financial advantage. As Matt puts it, “We keep using those Nectar hives for the grade bees because they’re easier to keep track of.”

This early view helps:

• Prevent last-minute surprises
• Prioritize which hives need boosting before transport
• Allocate resources more strategically
• Hit pollination-strength targets with confidence

Very soon, Nectar clients will also be able to predict the expected lifespan of their hives using AI. Just click on a the ‘Projected Longevity’ tab in the whiteboard and see that hives projected strength over time. 

2. Reduce Unnecessary Hive Movements (“Low-Touch Beekeeping”)

Case Study: Miller Honey Farms 

Every commercial beekeeper knows transportation is hard on bees—especially queens. Stress, temperature swings, poor nutrition in holding yards, drift, and disease pressure all add up. Historically, operations accepted this as part of the job.

Crews like Miller Honey Farms have shown it doesn’t have to be.

Jason Miller and his team pioneered a “low-touch” strategy that cuts hive movements nearly in half. They previously moved hives 13–15 times a year—including multiple stops through holding yards. But after developing a new logistics system, they reduced this to 7–8 movements, almost eliminating holding yards entirely.

While low touch beekeeping might not be possible for some operations, most beekeepers can apply one low touch strategy in particular: moving hives directly from the wintering shed to the pollination drops, avoiding holding yards altogether.

The results:

• Lower queen mortality
• Stronger bees
• Less broken equipment
• Reduced disease spread
• Faster, more predictable logistics

On Nectar’s Insights dashboard, beekeepers can also visualize the impact of movements on hive mortality. 

If you’re interested in learning more about low touch beekeeping, you can read the full article here. 

You can also read more about the impact of movement on hive health in this scientific blog article, which analysed more than 184,000 hives and found that reducing unnecessary movements—and spreading pollination work across more colonies—can dramatically cut mortality and boost profits.

3. Plan Hive Drops Digitally to Cut Down on Labor Costs

Case Study: Olivarez Honey

Before using Nectar, many operations, spent days—or weeks—on the road before almonds started, flagging drop locations and checking access routes.

One Nectar customer, Olivarez Honey, reported that their operations manager typically spent 1–2 full weeks driving to every pollination location ahead of time. After moving their planning workflow into Nectar, they were able to:

• Set all drops digitally
• Share gate codes, coordinates, and instructions with crews
• Send turn-by-turn directions via Google Maps
• Completely eliminate pre-season scouting drives
• Marks roads to avoid or other potentially hazardous conditions

That’s thousands of dollars saved in labour and fuel, before the season even starts. Digital pollination planning also gives crews clarity from Day 1. When bees arrive, everyone knows exactly where they’re going.

How planning ahead with Nectar helps:

• Reduces fuel costs by eliminating repeat visits to orchards
• Prevents mis-drops and the labor hours needed to correct them
• Minimizes overtime by giving crews precise routes and instructions
• Lowers equipment wear and tear by avoiding hazardous or inefficient roads
• Ensures crews hit orchards in the optimal order—reducing backtracking and truck time

4. Start with Last Year’s Contracts, Maps & Data Instead of Rebuilding from Scratch

(A best practice made easier with Nectar)

There’s no need to reinvent your pollination plan every year. Many Nectar beekeepers use last year’s data, contracts, and drop maps as the starting point—and iterate from there.

For operators like Matt Stayer, this isn’t just a time-saver; it’s a way to present professional, print-ready pollination plans to growers and brokers. As he notes, handing an orchardist a clean, accurate drop map “looks pretty professional”—a major upgrade from hand-drawn Google Earth pins. It’s also easy to archive orchards you may not service this year but want available for future seasons.

With Nectar, beekeepers can:

• Pull up last year’s drops instantly
• Duplicate or adjust contracts
• Reuse proven drop maps
• Update pricing, acreage, and hive counts without re-entering information
• Archive orchards or past contracts to reactivate later

Instead of chasing down old PDFs or re-flagging locations every January, they start from a clean, accurate operational memory that saves hours—and prevents errors.

Putting It All Together

Each of these practices creates value on its own, but the real power comes when they’re combined. Strong planning + fewer movements + better data + streamlined logistics = healthier bees and healthier margins.

If you’d like help setting up your pollination plan, we’re here to support you.