Context  

When December rolls around, it's time to start preparing for almond pollination. This can be an involved process, with preparation spanning the whole operation. 

Among other questions, beekeepers need to know: 

• How many hives will I have available for almond pollination?
• What work will I need to do to prepare for this demand? 
• Where will those hives be placed?
• How much money should I ask for each hive?
• Which orders will I pollinate?
• Which of my workers will take care of what tasks?

Nectar can help you answer these questions so you can go into the next season with a plan. We’ve put together a quick guide to help you understand how—with learnings from beekeepers that are using Nectar today.

1. Evaluating operational strength  

Planning for almonds starts with understanding the state of your hives. Beekeepers can record and display the relative strength and weakness of their hives with multiple tools in Nectar’s manager’s portal.

For example, beekeepers can start by visualizing the relative strength of their yard across the whole operation.

They can also review the strength of their yards broken down by strong, medium, and weak. 

2. Creating new contracts 

Keeping pollination contracts organized can help you communicate effectively with your team. And more importantly: with growers and brokers. 

With Nectar, all the information for each contract can be easily recorded to ensure that all of your growers trust the quality of your pollination services. 

To enter new contracts in Nectar, head to the pollination page and click ‘add contract.’ A pop-up window will emerge that asks for relevant information—from contact information to the type of crop to the dates you’re scheduled to drop bees in and out. 

Once entered, you can visualize pollination contracts by name, with a snapshot summary of your contacts visible at a glance. Contracts can be sorted by any relevant information, from drop dates to crop type to price. 

3. Planning hive drops digitally 

Nectar’s pollination tool makes it easy for beekeepers to set their drops, and provide detailed information to workers—from the gate codes needed to access pollination yards to exact directions to the blocks or drops themselves, accessible in Google Maps.

Planning drops before almonds begin, when beekeepers have more time available, can make it easier to start the year organized and prepared. 

To map the location of hive drops, head to Nectar’s yard map on the whiteboard page. Click ‘Create new yard’ and find the yard’s proposed location on the map. Click the ‘draw yard’ icon and enter the yard onto the map. 

After drawing the yard, a pop-up will allow you to enter key information, like the crop and yard type. You can also connect the yard directly to the contract information in the pollination tool.

Using the pollination tool in this way can help beekeepers save money by reducing the cost of fuel needed to prepare for the coming season.

For example, one Nectar customer uses Nectar to avoid driving to yard locations before the season to flag where the bees will go. 

In previous seasons, they explained, the operations manager would spend at least one to two weeks driving around to yard locations and flagging where drops should be placed. With Nectar, the owner was able to plan his hive drops digitally, and completely eliminate the need for pre-season flagging. 

4. End of year reporting

Nectar can help you evaluate the impact that previous years pollination contracts had on your hives' survivorship. 

For example, in 2023, the owner of Shoreline Honey, Nick Groenhoff, used Nectar to visualize his deadouts broken down by farm and crop.

In previous years, Groenhoff believed that blueberry pollination had a particularly harsh impact on his bees, but after running the report he discovered that apple pollination actually had worse mortality rates than blueberries.

“Usually we like to hate on blueberries, but this really made me take a second look at it,” Groenhoff said. “It challenged my preconceived notions.”

The report also helped Groenhoff identify that one of his pollination farms had a much higher mortality rate than the others. In a conversation with Nectar, he explained that, in 2024, he sent bees from a single yard to two different locations: “the same batch of bees to two different farms.”

Nectar’s reporting helped Groenhoff identify that one farm had a 10% mortality rate while the other had a 40% mortality rate. “So you know something is going on at that farm,” Groenhoff said—whether it's pesticide use, or other practices that are damaging to bees. “If you can get one insight like that every year,” Groenhoff said, “that will pay for the whole subscription.”

Taking time to analyze the past can help beekeepers plan their pollination routes in the coming year. This can easily be done with Nectar’s Insights feature, and, if beekeepers need additional support, with our analytics add-on, InsightsAssist Pro.

Wrapping Up

Nectar is a sophisticated tool that can be used in many ways. We know that some beekeepers feel they need to learn more about the product, and the ways that it can be used.

That’s why we think the period before pollination season can be a great time to prepare employees. Using the resources in our help center, employees can learn how to:

• Find orchards and drop information 
• Navigate to drops and or access points
• Use the RFID scanner
• Scan hives into drops
• Follow their visit list prepared by their manager in th...

Beekeepers can also contact our head of customer success at aaron@nectar.buzz. 

Thanks and happy beekeeping!