How much is a bee worth? Economic aspects of pollination of selected crops in Poland

Abstract

Scientific studies state that a considerable part of the economic value of crop plant production should be attributed to the free services of pollinating insects. Such calculations are available for several EU and North American countries, and the present paper evaluates the value of pollination services to 19 important Polish crop plants. It is estimated that the market value of 19 entomogamous crops reaches the sum of approx. 7.5 billion PLN (thousand million) (approx. 1.8 billion EUR), 39% of this may be attributed to the insect activities, the most important being bees (the service value of approx. 2.5 billion PLN/0.6 billion EUR) and dipterans (almost 0.3 billion PLN/ 74 billion EUR). The paper discusses also the challenges and pitfalls of similar estimations and the need for conservation actions directed on crop plant pollinators.