Honeybees display complex behaviors, learning, and potential emotional states that raise important welfare questions about commercial beekeeping practices.
Honeybees have sophisticated nervous systems and show behaviors consistent with some forms of emotional experience. Research at Queen Mary University found bees show pessimistic-like responses after distressing events, suggesting some form of negative affect. Commercial beekeeping involves practices that may cause significant suffering at population scale: wing-clipping of queens, transportation stress, colony manipulation, and pesticide exposure. Given that billions of bees are managed commercially, the welfare implications are enormous.