What Bees Are Worth to American Agriculture

In 2026, American beekeepers collected approximately $400 million in pollination rental fees. The crops their bees pollinated were worth $18.9 billion. That's a markup of roughly 47 to 1 - or, looked at from the beekeeper's side of the ledger, 2.1 cents on every dollar of value their insects created.

Nobody in any other industry would accept that ratio. A contractor who built a $19 million building and got paid $400,000 would have some pointed questions. But pollination isn't construction. The bees don't negotiate. The beekeepers barely do. And the number that matters - the $18.9 billion - exists in a different economic universe than the number that shows up on a beekeeper's balance sheet.

The gap between what pollination is worth and what pollinators get paid is one of the stranger features of American agriculture. It also explains why the entire industry has reorganized itself around a single nut that grows in a single valley in a single state.

The Two Numbers

The $18.9 billion figure comes from Nicolas Calderone at Cornell University, who in 2012 calculated that honey bees pollinated $12.4 billion in directly dependent crops and $6.8 billion in indirectly dependent crops. The USDA's own number lands at "more than $18 billion in revenue added to crop production." An earlier Cornell estimate from Roger Morse and Calderone in 2000 placed it at $14.6 billion. When you include all insect pollinators - not just managed honey bees - the broader Cornell estimate reaches $34 billion.

These are crop value numbers. They represent what the harvested product sells for, not what the pollination service itself costs. The distinction matters enormously and gets blurred constantly.

The $400 million is what beekeepers actually received in 2026 for renting their colonies to growers. That's the USDA NASS Cost of Pollination report number, and it has been climbing - total pollination service value has roughly doubled since 2010. Of that $400 million, almond pollination alone generated $325.8 million. Eighty-one percent of all US pollination revenue comes from one crop.

Honey production revenue in 2026 was $361.5 million. This marked the third consecutive year that pollination revenue exceeded honey revenue. The crossover happened around 2016, according to USDA Economic Research Service data, and the gap has been widening since. The beekeeper who used to be a honey producer is now, economically speaking, a livestock rental operator who happens to also collect honey.

The Dependency Chart

Not all crops need bees equally, and the ones that need them most aren't always the ones people expect.

Almonds are the headline case - essentially 100% dependent on honey bee pollination, unable to self-pollinate, requiring two to three colonies per acre. Without bees, there are no almonds. That biological dependency, combined with 1.38 million acres of California orchards, creates the demand that drives the entire migratory beekeeping industry.

But here's a number that surprises people: blueberries require three to four hives per acre. More than almonds. Blueberry pollen is sticky and heavy - the plant can't move it on its own and needs insects to physically transfer it between flowers. At roughly 90% dependency on bee pollination and the highest per-acre hive requirement of any major crop, blueberries are technically needier than almonds. They just don't have the acreage to dominate the market the way almonds do.

Cherries and apples both run at approximately 90% dependency. Avocados, watermelon, and cucumbers all require significant bee pollination. The crops that Americans eat daily - the fruits on the breakfast table, the vegetables in the dinner salad - are overwhelmingly pollinator-dependent.

And then there are the crops that appear on no one's mental list. Cotton benefits from bee pollination. Alfalfa - which feeds the dairy and beef industries - requires it. The economic ripple effects of pollination reach into supply chains that have nothing visibly to do with bees.

The Almond Gravitational Field

The reason almonds dominate the pollination economy isn't just acreage. It's timing, pricing, and the peculiar fact that almond honey tastes terrible.

Almond pollination fees averaged $209 per colony in 2025 - roughly triple the $66 average for all other crops. That premium has existed for two decades and shows no sign of closing. The gap widened dramatically between 2004 and 2006, when fees more than doubled from roughly $75 to $175 per hive. Colony Collapse Disorder panic and rapid almond acreage expansion hit simultaneously, and the price never came back down.

The timing premium is critical. Almonds bloom in February - the worst possible month for colony strength. Colonies must survive winter and arrive in California with at least eight frames of bees by early February, which means every management decision from September forward revolves around getting hives strong enough, soon enough, for one three-week window in the Central Valley. That's not a pollination contract. That's the entire business model.

California's almond acreage went from 418,000 bearing acres in 1995 to 1.38 million in 2023. More than tripling in roughly 25 years. That growth is the single largest driver of structural change in American commercial beekeeping. It's why beekeepers who used to stay put now drive trucks across state lines. It's why colony losses matter more financially than they used to. It's why the question "what are bees worth?" has a different answer now than it did in 1995.

And the almond honey problem: honey produced from almond blossoms is essentially unmarketable. It tastes, by most accounts, like soap and old wood. Unlike apple or blueberry pollination, where beekeepers can collect a crop-specific honey as a side benefit, almond pollination offers no secondary revenue. The rental fee is the entire transaction.

In 2017, US farmers paid $320 million total for pollination services. Almond producers alone accounted for $256 million of that - 80% of all pollination spending nationwide. Apple and blueberry industries each paid approximately $10 million. Every other crop combined accounted for the remaining $44 million. The gravitational pull of almonds bends everything else in the system toward it.

The Impossible Arithmetic

The numbers that keep the industry awake at night are simple.

The almond crop requires approximately 2.8 million colonies. The United States maintains approximately 2.7 million managed colonies. The crop needs more bees than the country has.

About 400,000 colonies come from California itself. The remaining 1.2 million arrive by truck from every other state - an annual convergence that Scientific American called "the largest managed pollination event anywhere in the world." Eighty-five percent of all available commercial hives end up in the Central Valley every February. Between 3,050 and 6,100 semi-trucks haul 200 to 400 colonies each, converging on a 400-mile stretch of valley floor over a few weeks.

The arithmetic works only because of two factors. First, colony multiplication - beekeepers split strong colonies in early spring, essentially making two from one, creating temporary numbers that don't persist. Second, imports - package bees from Australia, New Zealand, and domestic producers fill gaps left by winter losses.

But the buffer between demand and supply has been thinning. The 2024-2025 season recorded 55.6% total colony losses - the highest since tracking began. The 14-year running average sits at 41.4%. Every year, beekeepers replace roughly 40% of their colonies. At $200 per replacement, that's a recurring cost that eats directly into the pollination income that was supposed to be the upside.

A beekeeper earning $209 per colony for almond pollination and spending $200 to replace each colony that dies is running to stand still. The revenue looks good. The margin, once you subtract varroa treatments, transportation, feed, labor, and replacement costs, looks considerably less good.

What Happens If the Bees Don't Show Up

There is no Plan B for almonds. Not yet. Not really.

The almond industry has invested in self-fertile varieties - the 'Independence' cultivar being the most notable - that are marketed as reducing bee dependency. But a 2020 study published in Nature Scientific Reports found that bees still increased yields even in allegedly pollinator-independent almond varieties. The biology doesn't cooperate with the marketing.

Native bees provide meaningful pollination for some crops. In sweet cherry orchards, wild bees account for 43.5% of flower visits. In tart cherry, 34.7%. Some New York apple orchards have stopped renting managed hives entirely, relying on native bee populations. Bumble bees are demonstrably better than honey bees at "buzz pollination" - the vibrational technique needed for blueberries and tomatoes.

But native bees don't operate at almond scale. They can't be trucked. They can't be multiplied on demand. They don't come in boxes of 10,000 with a queen stapled to the side. For crops that need millions of colonies in a specific location during a specific three-week window, managed honey bees remain the only option that exists at industrial volume.

And then there's the robot idea. In 2018, Walmart filed six patents for autonomous drone farming technologies, including tiny pollination robots using sensors, cameras, and machine learning to identify flowers and transfer pollen. The World Economic Forum covered it. Tech publications ran excited headlines. Walmart has not publicly commented on the patents since filing them. Multiple research groups worldwide are working on robotic pollination using air jets, water jets, linear actuators, ultrasonic waves, and air-liquid sprays. Current focus is mainly greenhouse tomato pollination. Every prototype is estimated at least ten years from commercial viability.

The gap between "we patented a robot bee" and "the robot bee works in a 1.38-million-acre almond orchard in February" is roughly the same gap as the one between the $400 million beekeepers get paid and the $18.9 billion their bees create. Both gaps are enormous. Both gaps persist. And in both cases, the actual work continues to be done by insects that weigh less than a gram, navigate by dancing and pheromone, and have been at it for considerably longer than the patent office has existed.

The Declining Yield Problem

Even as colony numbers have held roughly stable at 2.6 to 2.7 million for two decades - a testament to beekeepers' ability to replace what they lose - per-colony honey yields have been declining at approximately half a pound per year. The bees are increasingly optimized for pollination, not honey production. Colonies bred for early spring buildup and strong February populations aren't necessarily colonies that produce maximum honey in July.

Wholesale honey hovers around $3 per pound, pushed down by imports that account for over 60% of US consumption. A well-managed hive produces 40 to 60 pounds of honey annually. At $3 per pound wholesale, that's $120 to $180 in honey revenue - less than a single almond pollination contract pays.

The math has been pushing commercial beekeepers toward pollination for twenty years. The math is winning. A typical California commercial operation now derives roughly 60% of revenue from almond pollination alone, 25% from honey, and 15% from other pollination contracts, queen sales, and bee products.

The American beekeeping industry has become, in economic terms, a pollination services industry that produces honey as a byproduct. The bees haven't changed. The flowers haven't changed. The spreadsheet changed, and everything else followed.

2.1 Cents on the Dollar

Back to the ratio. $400 million paid to beekeepers. $18.9 billion in crop value created. The difference represents the surplus value captured by everyone else in the supply chain - growers, packers, distributors, retailers, and ultimately consumers who eat a $4 bag of almonds without any awareness that a beekeeper in South Dakota drove 1,800 miles to make it possible.

The economics of pollination are, in this sense, the economics of invisibility. The service is essential. The service provider is interchangeable. The market clears at a price that keeps enough beekeepers alive to meet next February's demand but doesn't reflect anything close to the value created.

A 47-to-1 ratio between value created and value captured. A crop that needs more bees than the country has. Annual colony losses exceeding 50%. Robot replacements at least a decade away. And a rental market for insects that generates less revenue than a mid-sized regional bank.

The bees, as usual, have no comment on the arrangement. They're busy. February is coming.