Managed honeybees and wild pollinators face multiple stressors affecting their health and welfare. Understanding pollinator needs is essential for agriculture and ecosystem health.
The welfare of managed and wild bees raises increasingly important questions as evidence of bee sentience grows. Bees show sophisticated learning, memory, and social behaviour, and experimental evidence suggests they can experience stress states that influence decision-making in ways analogous to vertebrate negative affect. Commercial beekeeping involves practices — including queen clipping, artificial insemination, and mass transport — that impose significant physiological stress. Pesticide exposure causes sublethal harm to behaviour and reproduction. Improving pollinator welfare requires reducing pesticide use, improving habitat quality, and developing more humane beekeeping practices.