Region 1 - 2025 season - #2 of 29 by fee
Watermelon has a public USDA/NASS benchmark in Region 1; one pollination contract is 0.8x a national honey-season value per colony.
Source: USDA/NASS Cost of Pollination - public aggregate benchmark.
hivelinks.app/data/crops/watermelon
Among the 29 pollination crops USDA tracks in this benchmark bundle, Watermelon ranks #2 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.
Watermelon carries a benchmark pollination fee of $114 per colony, ranking #2 of 29 tracked crops and -22% against a full honey-season baseline of $146.
Watermelon is highlighted against the benchmark list, with a dashed honey-season baseline marked in the plot.
Pollinating watermelon at scale pulls in 78,890 colonies at peak bloom. The gap is bridged by the local producer-state colony base and migratory beekeepers who follow bloom windows.
Public crop-demand acres times benchmark stocking rate estimates peak demand against colonies kept in the producer states.
Peak bloom demand is below the colonies already kept in producer states, so this crop is less dependent on long-haul colony movement.
Watermelon pollination clusters in producer states. Open any of them for its full honey-and-colony profile, or jump to a neighboring crop.
States with public crop-demand acreage rows for this crop.
Closest per-colony benchmarks for quick comparison.
Moving colonies into watermelon 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.
Producer-state stressor averages are colony-weighted, then compared with the latest national Honey Bee Colonies baseline.
How this is derived: colony-weighted average of 8 watermelon producer states with USDA stressor rows for the same reporting period.