Do vegans eat honey?

If not, why?

Because it's an animal product.

Why not?

then using the fruits of their captive/slave labor is impermissible. How in the heck do vegans find non-captive bee fertilized fruits and vegetables?

Though I'm not vegan, I am very happy to be educated about your ethics.

Thanks for your tireless campaign against ignorance, and often in the face of outright hostility.

:hi:

Does it harm bees to harvest honey? I really don't know the answer to that, and I'm not trying to be snarky (although I am naturally snarky by nature (All Three))

First of all, bees produce honey to sustain the hive over the winter, and removing most or all of it and replacing it with a sugar mixture (which, unlike honey, spoils) means that more of them die over the winter. Also, the construction of bee boxes makes removal of honey without crushing some bees unlikely, if not impossible, so presumably honey contains some crushed bee goodness, which would mean it's not even properly vegetarian, let alone vegan.

and now I know, and knowing is half the battle.


so neener.

"so presumably honey contains some crushed bee goodness, which would mean it's not even properly vegetarian, let alone vegan."

Any vegetable, anywhere, would contain itty bitty insect parts. Or whole insects, for that matter.

Just sayin'

Honey is definitely avoidable. We realize that we don't and likely can't completely divorce ourselves from animal suffering (those vegetables came to the store on tires made with animal fats, too) but we do our best.

Reducing suffering is never, never enough--How can we call ourselves vegan when we slaughter a vegetable/breastfeed/engage in oral sex/ride in a car/watch a movie/use medication of any kind/drink pasteurized juice/use a non-digital camera/breathe, etc?

(Ever notice that 9 out of 10 of the worst 'vegan police' characters aren't even vegan?)

Shame on us for our hypocrisy. Oh, the shame.

Don't forget, when we walk, we'll inevitably squish something. Oh, and think of the field mice and bugs and bunnies and snakes and worms that die when our veggies are harvested!

Oh, and sweet baby jesus, our homes were built on SOME animal's habitat, yet the mud huts they'd suggest we live in would displace worms and other underground bugs.

Might as well give up and have the veal. Matter of fact, think I'll go get that mink coat I saw in the NM catalog.

I think the next time someone posts about driving a Prius, I'm gonna tell them to piss off since their still using SOME gas.

Didn't you know that carrots scream when you pull them out of the ground?

I think I'll have a thick juicy steak for dinner tonight. I may as well, right?

:eyes:

you know that none of those veggies are actually vegetarian.

And lacking a central nervous system aside, we don't really KNOW for certain that plants don't feel pain, so you make a fine point.

Guess I'll finally get to find out what the hype of that whole Kobe steak experience is. Like you said, might as well.

It's not about being fanatically perfect. It's about doing or personal best to minimize the harm we cause.

And it's always carnivores, who make no effort at all, who feel they have the right to challenge us for not being good enough. :wtf:

The only people with any right to challenge my vegan lifestyle are people who can show me how to do it better.

At least two filled shallow supers are always left for winter over, along with the deep food chamber. Only if the bees deplete these will a substitute (sugar/honey water) be used and it will not last long enough to spoil. A hive will go through a couple of quarts of sub in a day.

As for winter die off, that's part of the life cycle (human intervention or not). The queen stops laying in September, October at the latest. A honey bee's life span, after the larval stage, is o/a 3 months. The queen starts laying again in February, so early spring is a critical time.

As noted above, a few bees are always killed during a harvest, if for no other reason they'll sting the keeper. As for bee parts, commercial honey is routinely filtered.

If insect parts are problem for vegans, wouldn't they be concerned about them in harvested vegetable matter?

In any case, it doesn't really matter. It's an animal product, and vegans don't eat animal products.

The modern Langstroth hive: Bottom to top -- two hollow boxes, deeps, with storage frames. The queen lays her eggs in the lower box (brood chamber), honey and pollen is stored in the upper (food chamber). This is the queeen's and brood's personal bank and never harvested. On top of the deeps are stacked the shallow supers, about half the depth of the deeps. Inside each shallow are 10 frames on which the worker bees build combs and store excess honey. This is the honey extracted. Each frame is removed from the shallow; the combs de-capped and the honey remove. The frame returned to the shallow and the bees refill it. Now yes, a few bees are always killed during extraction - stepped on, squashed, etc, but we're talking may be a dozen. It's certainly not a massacre.

That sounds about like what we have in our hives, but as I'm not the beekeeper, who knows. "Exploitation of bees" is certainly a new one to me.

:hi:

It's just about universal now. About the only thing that's changed is material, just about all plastic now instead of wood.

I won't argue that commercial pollination isn't exploitation. It well may be; the jury's still out. The problem is without it ... well, if you like the price of food now ...

That's harm.

Wheat harvest. Kills grasshoppers in great numbers. Some make it through the combine. Some don't. Vegans really shouldn't be eating grains unless they were threshed by hand.

:)

Yes, we know that machine-harvesting kills insects and small animals in great numbers.

Let's look at what that means.

Let's imagine that harvesting a pound of vegetable matter kills 100 small animals (just for ease of math). Remember that producing a pound of meat requires maybe 10 pounds of vegetable matter.

So, my pound of vegetables kills 100 small animals. The corresponding pound of meat kills 1000 small animals plus the larger animal.

Given the context of doing less harm (not no harm) through veganism, can you see why that argument seems silly to us?

on the farm to aid in natural
pollination. The guy that takes
care of our bees is a master at it.
I have yet to see dead bees when he
harvests the honey.

Smoking them and brushing them off the frames certainly helps. You're not going to see piles of them. As said, the casualty rate is very low.

it fascinates me - he is an old
man (77) that has done it all his
life. He swears the bees won't sting
him because they 'know his scent'.
He did start the boxes at our farm
with his bees. He takes f.o.r.e.v.e.r.
when he does it and I have seen him gently
pick bees off the frame with his bare
fingers. He also is very anal about
making sure the box is clear of any bees
that may be mashed when putting the frames
back in. I would wager that his casualty
rate per number of live bees he takes care
of (our farm is not the only one) is somewhere
in the range of 1 per 10,000 bees.

I would also bet serious money that he kills
less bees in a year than any vegan that drives
a car (splatting them on the windshield and
radiator).

And who knows, he could be right about the scent. The more we learn about the girls, the more subtle and complex their world becomes.

You could have a very gentle strain of bees. One year we had a strain of kamikazes. They were just about impossible to deal with. Even with all the tricks of the trade their hostility got a lot of them killed.

I have seen him (this is gross)
wipe his hands under his armpits
before touching the bees or the
boxes. I have seen him do this and
pull down red wasp nests from under
the shelter eaves and the wasps never
even alerted (raised their wings etc),
this was done in the middle of summer
so I know they were not sluggish due
to cold weather. He is a treasure trove
of information about the 'old timey ways'.
I have learned much from him over the years.

Warm, sunny calm day with the honey flow in full swing, the girls are happy and laid back - mmmmmmmm.

Chilly, wet day at the end of the season, no prisoners!

And only if she asks nicely.

:P

:hide:

:spank:

The funny thing is we found a childrens book for our kiddo with hippos, and the whole books (all ten pages of it) is about how the little baby hippo calls bellys/belly buttons bee-bo! It's so cute.


And yes, I've been feeling very naughty this week!
:D

:D

I'M JOKING!!!!! I know the answer to that.

:rofl:

I keep seeing some lady on an suv for some reason.:hide: :yoiks:

:rofl: Oh you are good!

..never mind.