Honey bee colony health and welfare depend critically on access to diverse, high-quality forage throughout the season, with modern agricultural landscapes often failing to provide adequate nutrition.
Honey bee colony nutrition is a welfare issue operating at the colony level — nutritionally deficient colonies have reduced immune function, higher disease susceptibility, and shorter worker bee lifespans that translate into poorer colony welfare. The agricultural landscape transformation that has replaced diverse meadows and hedgerows with monoculture fields has created a nutritional environment hostile to optimal bee health. While managed colonies can be supplemented with protein substitutes during nutritional gaps, the most welfare-positive approach restores diverse floral resources at landscape scale. Farmers, gardeners, and land managers all contribute to the forage landscape that determines colony nutritional welfare.