Bees clearly experience 'pain'.  Early in my career, I advised a Ph.D. student who wanted to know how sensitive bees were to magnetic fields.  He tried operant conditioning, providing a positive reward if they successfully detected the field - with little or no success.  So, he thought about venom gathering methods and he fabricated a negative conditioning system.  The bees got a hot foot the field was present - no problem at all, they both detected the magnetic fields at far lower levels than reported and they acted fast to avoid the negative (electroshock) conditioning.  Apparently, his positive reward wasn't enough to matter to them, but the opposite showed an entirely different response.  They clearly knew when the magnet was on, and took avoidance action.  Now, one could argue that they detected the electric grid going hot rather than 'pain', but the behavioral response was what one would expect from a hot foot.
 
J.J. Bromenshenk
Bee Alert
Missoula, Mt
 

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