Systemic insecticides particularly neonicotinoids have caused significant harm to pollinators, and regulatory responses have been inconsistent between countries and farming sectors.
Pollinators exposed to sublethal neonicotinoid doses experience neurological impairment that reduces foraging efficiency, colony health and reproductive success. Individual bees navigate less accurately, learn more slowly and die at higher rates. Colony collapse events reduce entire populations to zero, causing mass welfare failure in social insects. The scale of insecticide impact on pollinator populations represents one of the largest welfare problems in the natural world.