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Crop pollination profile 2025 season - benchmark fees
Fee#15

Cucumber

Region 1 - 2025 season - #15 of 29 by fee

Benchmark pollination fee$73/ colony

Cucumber has a public USDA/NASS benchmark in Region 1; one pollination contract is 0.5x a national honey-season value per colony.

Fee / colony$73+0%
Fee / acre$25-71%
Stocking0.49 hives/achives per acre
Implied demand41,912colonies at peak

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

hivelinks.app/data/crops/cucumber

Among the 29 pollination crops USDA tracks in this benchmark bundle, Cucumber ranks #15 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

Cucumber carries a benchmark pollination fee of $73 per colony, ranking #15 of 29 tracked crops and -50% against a full honey-season baseline of $146.

Pollination fee vs. every tracked crop

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

direct
Fee / colony$73+0% vs crop average
Fee / acre$25-71% vs crop average
Hives / acre0.49-69% vs crop average
02

Demand and the colony gap

Pollinating cucumber at scale pulls in 41,912 colonies at peak bloom. The gap is bridged by the local producer-state colony base and migratory beekeepers who follow bloom windows.

Cucumber pulls in 41,912 colonies

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

derived
Implied colony demand41,912
Kept in producer states722,000
0.1x 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 acres85,500public crop demand
Hives / acre0.49benchmark stocking
U.S. colony share1.7%of managed colonies
03

Where it is grown

Cucumber 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 cucumber 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
Cucumber growing statesU.S. baseline
Varroa mites27.4%
Other pests11.2%
Pesticides7.1%
Other6.9%
Diseases4.9%
Unknown4.3%

How this is derived: colony-weighted average of 7 cucumber producer states with USDA stressor rows for the same reporting period.