Beyond Varroa mite, honey bees and wild bees face a range of disease and parasite threats that compromise individual welfare and colony health, requiring active management by beekeepers and policy support for wild bee health.
Bee disease causes genuine welfare harm to individual bees and colony-level suffering. American foulbrood, which kills larvae through a painful-seeming slow death, is particularly serious — the requirement to destroy infected colonies is both a welfare measure for the bees whose suffering is ended and a biosecurity necessity. Disease spillover from managed honey bee hives to wild bumblebees is a welfare and conservation concern that argues for careful placement of managed hives near known bumblebee populations. Individual beekeeper hygiene and monitoring practice directly determines the welfare outcomes for their bees and potentially for wild pollinators in the surrounding landscape.