🌾 Beekeeper–Farmer Partnership Model

About this simulation

Pollination-dependent crops such as apples and almonds gain measurable yield from managed honeybee colonies, but the benefit is not uniform across a field — it falls off with distance from the hives. Well-structured partnerships place hives strategically, dedicate a slice of field edge to forage habitat (a wildflower or hedgerow strip), and agree in advance how the resulting value is split between the land-owning farmer and the beekeeper who supplies the colonies.

How it works

• Trees are colour-coded from muted green (low pollination boost) to gold (high boost) based on distance to the nearest hive.
• Forage strip — a wildflower/hedgerow buffer along one edge removes a few rows of crop but extends the effective foraging range of every hive, because well-fed colonies work harder and farther.
• Pollination value is the modelled dollar value of the yield uplift across the whole field for this season.
• Fee split — many agreements pay the beekeeper a flat or per-hive fee for pollination services rather than splitting yield directly; the slider shows what share of the modelled value each side effectively nets.

Controls

• Hives placed — number of hive stacks sited along the field edge (0–8).
• Forage strip width — share of field edge given to pollinator habitat instead of crop rows.
• Pollination fee → beekeeper — how the modelled pollination value is divided between farmer and beekeeper.
• Season — bloom, mid-season or harvest, changing canopy colour and bee activity.
• ↺ Reset field — restores default values. Drag to rotate, scroll to zoom.

Did you know?

Research on orchard pollination (e.g. Garibaldi et al., 2013, and USDA extension studies) consistently finds that fruit-set and yield decline the farther a tree sits from a hive, and that flowering hedgerows near fields can improve both pollinator retention and wild-bee populations — a key reason many land-access agreements now include a habitat clause alongside the hive-placement terms.