Pollinator populations are declining globally due to pesticides, habitat loss, and disease, with both ecological and potential welfare consequences at enormous scale.
The welfare status of bees remains uncertain but is increasingly taken seriously by researchers. Bees show signs of pessimistic cognitive bias when stressed, suggesting they have emotional states that can be negative. Colony collapse disorder causes the deaths of billions of individual bees annually. The exposure to sublethal doses of neonicotinoids impairs bee foraging, navigation, and reproduction in ways consistent with welfare harm. The scale of pollinator decline represents potential suffering at a scale that warrants precautionary welfare consideration.