Pesticides cause significant harm to bee populations, affecting colony health and potentially causing individual suffering in insects whose capacity for pain is increasingly recognized.
Bee welfare sits at the intersection of insect welfare science and conservation biology. The evidence that bees have some capacity for aversive experience has grown substantially - they show pessimistic cognitive biases after receiving shock, a marker associated with negative emotional states. The practical welfare implications are significant given the scale of pesticide exposure. Sublethal neonicotinoid exposure impairs bees' ability to navigate home, effectively stranding them away from the colony and causing prolonged energetic stress before death. Regulatory action on neonicotinoids serves both welfare and conservation goals simultaneously.