Renting hives for pollination
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Pollination is not a sideline to honey production. It is a separate business that happens to use the same boxes, and it usually competes with your honey crop rather than complementing it.
A different business with different equipment
Hives have to be moved at night with entrances closed, on a truck, to a schedule set by bloom and weather, and moved again when the contract ends. That means pallets, straps, a way to load, and a tolerance for working at two in the morning.
It also means colonies built to a contracted strength by a date, which is a different management calendar from one aimed at a honey crop. The grower is buying frames of bees, not hives, and strength is usually specified and inspected.
What growers actually pay for
A stocking rate per acre and a minimum colony strength, for a defined window. Contracts vary widely by crop and region, and almonds are the extreme case that distorts every general statement about rates.
Put it in writing: number of colonies, strength standard and how it is measured, placement, access, dates in and out, payment terms, and what happens on pesticide application. That last clause is the one that matters most and is most often missing.
What it costs the bees
Transport stress, a period on a single forage source which is nutritionally narrow, mixing with colonies from many operations at high density, and the disease and mite exchange that follows. Colonies frequently come home needing feeding and mite treatment.
That is the honest cost side, and it is why some producers who could do this choose not to. It is not a reason never to, but a contract that does not cover it is one you are subsidizing.
Whether it is worth it at your scale
For a handful of colonies, commercial pollination almost never pays once you count the truck, the time and the recovery. The arithmetic only starts working at numbers where you are moving pallets rather than hives.
What does work at small scale is local and short-range: an orchard, a market garden or a grower a few miles away who wants bees for a few weeks and values having a local person they can call. The money is smaller, the strain is smaller, and the relationship is often worth more than the fee.