> Does anyone have information on the use of tech to evaluate colony strength where there is significant money on the line?
Growers grading hives is an adversarial process, so the growers do not want an objective metric where a machine would make the call. They want human "inspectors", as a subjective evaluation is more to their liking, as it allows them to treat the beekeeper arbitrarily and unfairly with impunity.
The problem is easily solved with a calculator. With it, one works out how to craft an agreement that pays for pollination with a percentage of the value of the harvested crop. I did this for years, and it was the primary reason that I had more growers asking me to pollinate than I could accommodate. A grower is much more able to pay you when he gets paid. In spring, a grower has nothing but bills, and he naturally feels some resentment that he has to sometimes borrow money to pay them all.
But I'm not standing with my hand out, I'll get paid out of the checks he gets in the fall. So he's in a far more expansive and generous mood, and feeling "rich". I often got bonuses, over and above the agreed percentage, "just because". Also infinite drops for my 17 elderly and rescued horses. ("Drops" are bruised apples.) The nearest two growers would drop off a few crates every month.
If the price of apples was down, I made less because my growers made less. We were *partners* in making the best apples we could, so there was no need for any suspicion that I was renting out anything but the best-performing hives I could bring to bear. And no concern on my part that they would spray any poison when my bees were on their orchards. But by simply being less greedy, I was fully booked when other beekeepers would sometimes get fired or underbid by another. This certainly took some capital to finance my own operation, but except for fuel, one do one's spending on the bees in fall and winter, so I did not need to borrow any operating capital.
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