I recently worked on a system for a commercial beekeeper who runs about 3,000 hives between Florida and Maine, moving his bees arround for polliation (most hives) but also placing some out in locations for honey production only. He runs one or two supers over his hives placed for pollination, over an excluder. Here is what he tracks:
 - when and where (grower, location and crop) the hives were first dropped
 - the "basis date", or date when the bees on site were last swapped with fresh bees (he may pull
    the hives  from the original drop and replace with fresh bees;  the pulled hives have honey
    pulled off, checked for disease, possibly medicated (FGMO) and deployed again at another grower)
 - when the hives were pulled.
 - when the hives were moved (and if swapped for fresh bees at the same time)
  He knows what pollination rate he is getting by crop.  Sometimes a grower will request additonal bees if there is a competing floral source that is distracting the bees from the first drop (honey locust in the woods, or some other blossom that is taking the bees away from his crop), and those bees ("short term bees") get a discounted rate because they are not there for the whole bloom. Similarly, sometimes a grower will request the bees to stay past the original bloom, for some late crops (there is a small fee for "late crops").
 He may also be asked to move the bees from the first drop to a different site at the same farm.  He will charge a small amount for each move.
  Basically he wants my software to make it easy for him to key in his drop/pull/move information (input is fast and mostly by mouse); to find out quickly where all of his bees are and how long they've been there; to find out how long since his deployed bees have been swapped with fresh bees (need to have honey pulled off). He also wants to generate invoices, show for each grower what  the invoice amount is, when it was printed (sent), how much is already paid, and what is outstanding, and finally, he wants a "first of year letter" for each grower showing how many bees he used, when his bees were dropped and pulled, and the date-weighted average date that his bees arrived, together with next year's pollination rate for each of the crops the grower needs bees for.
  Because he is constantly looking over this inventory and assessing the bees when they are pulled or swapped, they get inspected rigorously and problems dealt with as they arise.  Records per hive are not kept, nor are hives indivually numbered. He places a premium on educated staff that handles the bees with care and routinely inspects for colony health.
/C.Crowell

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