Allen,
I like you disagree with the brood method of determining the polination
capabilities of a colony as put forth in A Growers Guide when dealing
with spring orchard polination in midwest or possibly your far north
area.
A beekeeper using The Growers Guide tape can slip nucs in on the grower.
Rent him a lot more hives than he needs and get his nucs ready for the
clover flow while being within the brood guide lines. In Missouri the
smart growers want hives with field bees and not nucs. There isn't room
in this discussion to go into what the beekeeper does with said nucs
after the apple bloom but combined back they make stong hives for clover
bloom.
Many beekeepers make nucs by pulling sealed brood up above a queen
excluder and then come back a few hours later and take the nuc after
NURSE bees have moved up to cover brood.  To get the six or eight frames
of brood as per the Growers Guide you need  brood from several hives at
that time of year usually. I would expect from many hives farther north.
They add a caged queen and head for the orchards. Whats wrong with this
picture you say?
If  egg stage is 3 days and larva stage is 5.5 days then the sealed
brood stage would need approx 12 days till all is hatched. Even if some
of the brood pulled up was to hatch the next day they wouldn't be field
bees and polinators for at LEAST two weeks. if some of the brood pulled
up was sealed the day before the nuc was made up it wouldn't hatch for
eleven days and wouldn't be polinators for another fourteen days at the
least. If you say the hatching bees will replace the first nurse bees
freeing those bees up to polinate they will and maybe enough to keep the
grower off your back. After all he saw all those frames of brood and saw
The Grower Guide tape you showed him. Beekeepers pulling this scam
allways bring a veil for the grower and show him the frames of brood and
some charge according to the number of frames of brood. NOT a scam
according to The Growers Guide and common practice with over wintered
bees in north country as hives with eight frames of sealed brood are
scarce when apples bloom. I don't have a big problem with the above as
long as the beekeeper tells the grower he is bringing nucs and charges
less because he has to bring double or triple the hives to get the job
done but the above is not the way i do business. I bring strong hives
with field bees. Beekeepers using nucs for polination usually make the
nucs up a day before going into the orchard. The growers call for the
bees and then want the bees out in appox two weeks. Two or three good
flying days are usually enough if there is enough field bees on hand.
Most apple growers judge pollination the way i do in my home orchard.
You go out in the middle of the day like i have been doing all week and
see if blooms are being worked by enough bees. After a couple years a
grower knows what a orchard in bloom with enough bees to polinate looks
like. If he doesn't see enough bees he calls the nuc beekeeper and
complains and he brings more nucs and usually charges regular
pollination fees for those nucs.OK by the Growers Guide tape if enough
sealed brood.
Other crops don't have this problem as bad because then northern bees
have got a full force of field bees and who wants to count brood in
double boxes packed with bees. On those hives we tilt the top box
forward on as many as the grower wants to look at at about 5pm in the
evening and look at the bottoms of the frames. On strong hives usually
most of the frames are covered with bees and the grower is satisfied.
The scam beekeeper lifts the lid without any smoke and the bees rush to
the light giving the appearance of being strong or scaring the grower
bad enough he has seen enough.
Most beekeepers are reputable and most growers in our area use the same
beekeepers each year but the nuc scam is used more than most growers
realize.
I do see the Growers guide as a valuable tool for beekeepers renting
nucs for apple polination but field bees do the polinating and even a
strong colony may only have a few thousand of them at apple blossom and
nucs in singles made up as above only a few hundred. I allways hate when
a fellow grower wants me to take a look at his bargain out of state bees
which are not polinating. Most of those type situations involve newly
made up nucs in singles represented as hives with a force of field bees.
I am a beekeeper but i hate dishonesty.
Bob