Colony collapse disorder and chronic bee population decline affect billions of individual bees and represent a major wildlife welfare problem driven by pesticides, parasites, habitat loss, and pathogen interactions.
Bee welfare operates at both colony and individual levels. At the colony level, collapse events represent welfare failures for tens of thousands of individual insects simultaneously. At the individual level, bees exposed to pesticides that impair navigation, memory, and immune function experience welfare harm that leaves them unable to return to the hive, forage effectively, or resist infection. The welfare case for protecting bees is strengthened by growing evidence of insect nociception and the behavioural complexity of bee navigation, communication, and social organisation. Protecting bee welfare requires addressing the multiple stressors — pesticides, parasites, nutrition, pathogens — that interact to drive population decline.