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The Honey Index
Crop pollination profile 2025 season - benchmark fees
Fee#10

Cherry

Region 6 and 7 - 2025 season - #10 of 29 by fee

Benchmark pollination fee$81/ colony

Cherry has a public USDA/NASS benchmark in Region 6 and 7; one pollination contract is 0.6x a national honey-season value per colony.

Fee / colony$81+11%
Fee / acre$119+38%
Stocking1.58 hives/achives per acre
Implied demand151,094colonies at peak

Source: USDA/NASS Cost of Pollination - public aggregate benchmark.

hivelinks.app/data/crops/cherry

Among the 29 pollination crops USDA tracks in this benchmark bundle, Cherry ranks #10 by the fee a beekeeper earns per colony. This page keeps its pollination economics, peak bloom demand, growing states, and colony-health context tied to public USDA/NASS aggregate rows.

01

Pollination economics

Cherry carries a benchmark pollination fee of $81 per colony, ranking #10 of 29 tracked crops and -45% against a full honey-season baseline of $146.

Pollination fee vs. every tracked crop

Cherry is highlighted against the benchmark list, with a dashed honey-season baseline marked in the plot.

direct
Fee / colony$81+11% vs crop average
Fee / acre$119+38% vs crop average
Hives / acre1.58+1% vs crop average
02

Demand and the colony gap

Pollinating cherry at scale pulls in 151,094 colonies at peak bloom. The gap is bridged by the local producer-state colony base and migratory beekeepers who follow bloom windows.

Cherry pulls in 151,094 colonies

Public crop-demand acres times benchmark stocking rate estimates peak demand against colonies kept in the producer states.

derived
Implied colony demand151,094
Kept in producer states581,409
0.3x local colonies

Peak bloom demand is below the colonies already kept in producer states, so this crop is less dependent on long-haul colony movement.

Pollinated acres95,800public crop demand
Hives / acre1.58benchmark stocking
U.S. colony share6.3%of managed colonies
03

Where it is grown

Cherry pollination clusters in producer states. Open any of them for its full honey-and-colony profile, or jump to a neighboring crop.

04

Colony health at bloom

Moving colonies into cherry bloom means moving them into the pest pressure reported by its growing states. This section compares those producer-state stressors with the U.S. colony-health baseline.

Pest and stressor pressure at bloom

Producer-state stressor averages are colony-weighted, then compared with the latest national Honey Bee Colonies baseline.

derived
Cherry growing statesU.S. baseline
Varroa mites28.6%
Other pests12.2%
Pesticides9.3%
Other9.1%
Diseases5.9%
Unknown2.2%

How this is derived: colony-weighted average of 5 cherry producer states with USDA stressor rows for the same reporting period.