Instead of using NUC's use a single deep and a super with an excluder.
Keep your eye on them and pull a frame of brood if they start to get too
populace. Any smaller than that and you can't get enough field bees to
effectively pollinate. Use 5-8 frames of bees. If there are 8 frames,
keep an eye and be on the alert for swarming behavior if they expand.
New queens will help suppress the swarming. If the pollen source is
good, the queen will begin laying like gangbusters and fillup the single
deep. Keep your eye on them and pull a frame of brood if they start to
get too populace.
        You can further reduce weight if you move the super separate. Just add
it empty before the move and replace it with an empty one just before
the removal. Remember, they don't have to be light all the time, just
when you need to move them. You can pull deeps of honey and replace with
empty just before the move. Make sure they get food once they are in
place.

Thom Bradley
Thom's Honeybees
Chesapeake, VA

[log in to unmask] wrote:
>
> Anyone have experience using  5 frame nucs for pollination of home gardens/a
> couple fruit trees?
> I get many requests for bees and would not mid the lifting if I could keep
> things down to 50 lbs or less.