The Honey Index

Crop pollination profile 2025 season - benchmark fees

Fee#25

Sunflower

Region 6 and 7 - 2025 season - #25 of 29 by fee

Benchmark pollination fee$49/ colony

Sunflower has a public USDA/NASS benchmark in Region 6 and 7; one pollination contract is 0.3x a national honey-season value per colony.

Fee / colony$49-33%

Fee / acre$65-24%

Stocking1.32 hives/achives per acre

Implied demand-colonies at peak

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

hivelinks.app/data/crops/sunflower

Among the 29 pollination crops USDA tracks in this benchmark bundle, Sunflower ranks #25 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.

Pollination economics

Sunflower carries a benchmark pollination fee of $49 per colony, ranking #25 of 29 tracked crops and -67% against a full honey-season baseline of $146.

Pollination fee vs. every tracked crop

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

direct

Fee / colony$49-33% vs crop average

Fee / acre$65-24% vs crop average

Hives / acre1.32-15% vs crop average

Demand and the colony gap

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

Sunflower pulls in - colonies

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

derived

Implied colony demand-

Kept in producer states-

No public gap

The current bundle does not publish enough crop-demand and colony inventory context to calculate a local gap.

Pollinated acres-public crop demand

Hives / acre1.32benchmark stocking

U.S. colony share-of managed colonies

Where it is grown

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

Geography

Producer states

States with public crop-demand acreage rows for this crop.

Grown in

No state-level crop-demand acreage is published for this benchmark in the current bundle.

Colony health at bloom

Moving colonies into sunflower 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

Sunflower growing statesU.S. baseline

Diseases-

Other-

Other pests-

Pesticides-

Unknown-

Varroa mites-

How this is derived: colony-weighted average of 0 sunflower producer states with USDA stressor rows for the same reporting period.