Bee welfare encompasses both the collective health of managed colonies and the population-level wellbeing of wild pollinators facing multiple threats.
Bee welfare sits at the intersection of individual insect welfare (a contested but increasingly recognized concern) and ecosystem-level impacts of pollinator decline. Research showing bees display pessimistic cognitive bias after stress, can experience pain-like states after injury, and show individual variation in decision-making has shifted the scientific consensus toward recognizing bees as candidates for welfare consideration. Managed honey bee welfare concerns include the stress of transportation to crops for commercial pollination services, queen rearing practices, and Varroa management through pesticide treatments applied within hives. Wild bee welfare concerns operate at population level through habitat loss, pesticide exposure, and pathogen spread from managed colonies. The collapse of wild bee populations has cascading effects on ecosystem health and food security that ultimately harm both human and animal wellbeing broadly.