Revenue per hive
The top line, before costs: what a colony earns in a year across almond fees, honey, other pollination sets, and bees sold — per colony and across the whole operation. The starting figures are the published 2025–26 ones; replace them with your contracts.
The estimate — gross revenue
| Almond pollination | — |
| Honey | — |
| Other pollination | — |
| Nucs and queens | — |
| Whole operation | — |
| Per colony (across every colony you run) | — |
Revenue is not profit. The University of Illinois sample budget for a representative migratory operation found about $31 per colony above cash costs — and a loss once equipment and capital recovery were counted. This tool figures the top line only; your costs are the other half of the story.
Where the starting figures come from. The almond fee default, $200, is the Almond Board of California's October 2026 figure for conventional almond pollination (about $200 per hive). The University of Illinois farmdoc Sample Cost and Returns for a Migratory Commercial Beekeeping Operation 2025–2026 — a representative 8,500-colony operation running North Dakota to Texas to California, the same circuit as this site's corridor table — budgets a $195 almond fee, 70 pounds of honey per colony, and a $1.90 bulk honey price, renting about 5,000 of its 8,500 colonies for almonds (the 59% default above). For scale: USDA counted a 48-pound average yield per colony for the 2025 crop across all operations with five or more colonies — backyard and sideline yields pull that average well below a migratory honey operation's.
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