Maximize Apple Pollination

    Apples bloom in clusters of 5 blossoms. The first to open (called the "king" bloom) is the strongest blossom, and all other things being equal, will give the best fruit. This bud gives off hormones which tend to suppress the other four blossoms.
    "Every" effort should be bent toward getting the king bloom pollinated. When you get good king pollination, there will be a natural thinning effect from the hormonal suppression, which, if needed, can easily be helped along with spray thinning.
      King bloom can miss out on pollination because of cold or wet weather, or it can be damaged by frost, but a common reason is because the bees simply aren't in the orchard in time. An common shibboleth among extension folks is: "Don't bring in the bees until the bloom is already open, because they will get used to working on other flowers and will ignore the apple blossoms."

    Was it Abe Lincoln that said, if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it? Frankly this is a lot of nonsense, UNLESS the colonies are very weak. Good, strong colonies with plenty of open brood, will work ALL nectar and pollen sources, including the apple blossoms.
  So the grower waits until he sees some bloom before he calls the beekeeper. The beekeeper, suddenly swamped with grower calls, cannot move instantly and the bees wind up being placed after king bloom is done.  I always tell the growers, "Better a week early than a day late."

    Following the king bloom is a group of three blossoms, all of about equal strength. No one blossom is able to suppress the other two. When the king blossom does not get pollinated, the tendency is for all three of the next blossoms to be pollinated together. THEN you have much too heavy a crop, and you have a problem. For fresh fruit production, you want no less than eight to ten inches between apples. For process apples, you can let them be a little thicker.
  Because there is no natural advantage of any one over the three, spray thinning just doesn't work. If you put on too heavy a dose, all three apples drop; if you do not have enough dose, none of them will drop. So you are stuck with (expensive) hand thinning.
  It is not always possible to get the king bloom pollinated, but growers certainly could do a lot better, if they'd be sure to get the bees in on time.

Once in a while, none of these four blossoms make it, usually due to a late frost. The fifth blossom is weak, and will not make much of a crop, but if it can be pollinated, will save the trees from a lot of woody growth, and reduce the tendency toward biennial bearing.  That is basically a salvage effort.