Honeybee colonies have been declining dramatically due to Colony Collapse Disorder, pesticides, parasites, and habitat loss. Bee welfare matters both for ecosystem services and for the intrinsic value of bee lives.
Individual honeybees experience states influenced by their environment — research shows bees in positive resource situations show optimistic cognitive biases, while bees experiencing hive vibration stress show pessimistic biases consistent with negative affect. Whether this constitutes welfare in a morally relevant sense is debated, but at the colony level, CCD represents catastrophic harm to millions of individual animals. Varroa infestation causes physical suffering as mites feed on developing brood and adult bees. Pesticide exposure impairs navigation, causing individual bees to fail to return to their colonies and die.