Pollinators including bees, butterflies, hoverflies, and moths face population declines from habitat loss, pesticides, and disease that impose welfare costs on individual insects.
Pollinator welfare - to the extent that pollinators are sentient - is directly affected by habitat quality and pesticide exposure. A bee colony unable to find sufficient nectar resources faces starvation; a bee exposed to sub-lethal neonicotinoids experiences navigation impairment that reduces foraging success. Whether these constitute morally significant suffering depends on unresolved questions about bee sentience. Regardless of the welfare status of individual bees, the ecosystem services provided by pollinators - food production, wild plant reproduction - connect pollinator welfare to the welfare of many other species including humans and livestock.