I pollinated apples for a little over a decade in VA.
(I also made splits from the colonies about to swarm, and rented them for
kitchen garden pollination, but they were just earning their keep.)

Every few years, someone comes along and touts how native bees are "better
pollinators", and makes some flat statement like "managed honeybee colonies
are not needed".  The problem with the statement as it applies to apples is
obvious to anyone who has ever met an apple grower.  These are nice guys,
salt of the earth, but they reach for their spray rig when their KIDS start
to act up, kid you not.

There is no way that a viable population of native/solitary/bumble bees can
live and reproduce within foraging range of any commercial apple orchard.
There's simply too much poison being used, and the foraging range of these
alternative pollinators is too short.  These guys use a pesticide to "thin
the bloom" once pollination is done, as it works better than any herbicide.
(Fewer blooms mean larger fruit.)

Someone asked, so I'll explain how tough it is to get an apple blossom
pollinated.

If you cut open an apple you should find 5 "pockets" (carpels) with ideally,
2 seeds each.  If all ovules are pollinated by the bees, you get a nice
horizontally symmetrical fruit, with at most one or two missing seeds of the
10.  Asymmetrical fruit is lower-grade, and might be rejected by packing
houses.  Each of those ovules are a separate landing or hover for a bee.  As
I remember, apples, pears, persimmons, pomegranates, and kiwi fruit are the
only tree fruits having these multiple ovules.  All the other common tree
fruits and nuts have single ovules.   Apples are most often pollinated when
the snow has just melted, so hives are moved in snow or mud or both, and a
key factor is convincing your customers that bees can fly, and will fly from
a central location to the apple blossoms if the understories are cut before
the bees arrive, and pomptly recut if dandelions pop up.

I know that pollination pays off in apples, as my business model was based
on being paid for pollination with a percentage of the value of the
harvested crop.  This basically "financed" the pollination for the entire
summer, so the grower, who has lots of spring expenses, would not pay me a
dime until he got paid in the fall.  Of course, when he just got a fat
check, the growers tend to be more generous, so I often got paid "bonuses"
in good years over and above the contracted percentage.  But I prospered
only when my customer prospered, and this cut out a whole raft of bogus
mutual suspicion that often crops up when pollination paid for on a "per
hive" basis, and payment is expected when services are rendered.

More important, a "partnership" with the grower meant that each party has an
incentive to make the other's job easier.

Cool falls will slowly become more and more rare in the South, and cool
falls are needed for a decent apple.  It is said by many that VT and NH may
be the only apple-growing regions left in a few decades.  What with the lack
of natural snow and weather too warm for snow-making, and the apple orchards
doomed or converted to peach orchards, the mountains will be far quieter and
far fewer people will be able to make a living in the mountains. 

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