This is the simplest and most direct answer to any question concerning animal farming.
It is exploitation and they are seen as a resource. There is no situation where the individual animals benefit from it.
I'ma say no; it's not the biggest deal, but a few considerations:
- beekeepers routinely crush bees in the process of beekeeping, even if they're careful
- sometimes entire hives are killed under the assumption they might not make it through winter, to save on feed
- honeybees are an invasive species, who can spread disease to native bees and also outcompete them for food; their presence usually reduces populations of native bees. We need those native bees, because some have evolved to pollinate specific plants many times more effectively than honeybees. Supporting honey means reducing biodiversity for bee species and maybe driving some species to extinction, which also reduces growth for wildflowers and the crops we eat
it’s not the biggest deal
This entirely depends on the person's view of what lives have value and if insects deserve less cruelty than mammals and birds.
All of your points are correct and detailed in the Earthling Ed video about honey:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clMNw_VO1xo
Good post.
Honey absolutely causes actual harm, both to our environment by introducing migratory beekeeping that outcompetes endemic wild bee species and to the European honey bees that have their honey taken and replaced with less nutritious sugar water, then often culled.
Watch this with her, it's a good summary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clMNw_VO1xo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clMNw_VO1xo
Watch Earthling Ed's video on why vegans don't eat honey.
Of course, if you're on your way to becoming fully plant-based diet, honey would be one of the last things I'd focus on cutting out.
No, but what does it matter? Beekeeping is good for the population of bees, something that's in danger right now. Humans and animals working together for mutual benefit is good.
Beekeeping is centered around the European honey bee. Talks about "bee population" in reference to domesticated beekeeping are meaningless and promoting migratory beekeeping like that actually hurts local bee species (which are also more effective pollinators than European honeybees) by introducing competition for flower nectar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clMNw_VO1xo
Beekeeping is good for beekeepers, not the environment. It is not mutual benefit for humans, it is another form of exploitation and introduction of invasive species to produce just one more form of sugar for us to eat.
Beekeeping is fine and good, harvesting honey from those bees is exploitative.
Honest question cause I’m dumb, does it negatively effect the bees in any way?
Former beekeeper here. The thing to remember about the declining bee population is that honeybees aren't in any danger. They also aren't indigenous to North America. Bee competition is also kinda weird, where hive bees (like the Italian Honeybee that makes the honey we eat) and indigenous solitary bees (like the Mason Bee) don't really compete with each other for food or space to live. Commercial beekeeping really doesn't have all that much to do with indigenous bee populations.
In fact, commercial honeybeekeeping actually does hurt native bees in the form of mites. Varroa mites are little parasites that prey on bees by waiting on flowers for them to land on and then clinging onto their backs (or nesting in their trachea if they're the small kind). Historically, varroa haven't been a huge problem for bees because they're such obsessive clean freaks that they'll just pick them off. Once the mite gets picked off of the bee's back, it falls to the ground and can't climb its way back and starves/freezes to death. Thing is, in the contemporary Langstroth Hive box design --the white boxes that you see people keep bees in-- the mite just falls to the floor of the hive where it can crawl its way back onto another bee.
Ok, well, that explains how it hurts bees that are kept as livestock, but how does that affect wild bees? Because if a honeybee hive is infected with mites (and literally 100% of hives in North America that aren't treated for mites are), it's acting as a constant mite-spreading vector, infecting other bees in the area. As long as the honeybee hive is filled with mites, those mites will lay eggs and then hitch a ride back onto flowers in the area, waiting to ambush another solitary or hive bee.
This effect caused an explosion in mite population iirc in the 90s? Either way, bee populations have been suffering since then, but commercially kept bees have had the support of the agricultural industry to keep them afloat. Wild bees? Not so lucky. The good news is that there's a few reasons that bee populations could be making a comeback. One is that bees are some of the animals with the highest rates of genetic recombination (i.e. they evolve the fastest), and wild bees are adapting to resist mites without the help of agricultural treatments. Another is that promising treatments for mites are on the horizon. I was using sublimated oxalic acid on my bees, and it was incredibly effective in my experience. The FDA approved research on using oxalic acid the year I got out of beekeeping, and I haven't kept up on it but I'm hopeful it'll make a difference
Wondering your source on bees not competing for the same resources as wild bees. Both compete for nectar and pollen, and unless they're specifically adapted for certain flower morphology like bumblebees, would be effected by local beekeeping agriculture.
I'd love to learn more, but my research has always indicated that.
You're probably right . My source for basically every claim I've made is other beekeepers that I've worked with. What I've heard is that it isn't the bees competing for nectar/pollen, its flowers competing for pollinators and that the limiting factor for maximum bee population isn't food but suitable habitats. If you've done research and found otherwise, absolutely trust your research.
I was just interested, like with dairy farmers and "facts" on how milk production is good and healthy, I distrust any farmer trying to downsell the negative impacts of whatever product they profit from, but am open to reading studies on if they're right.
Flowers do compete for pollinators too, that doesn't necessarily mean introducing more pollinators is always good if those pollinators do a worse job and hurt local pollinator species.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clMNw_VO1xo
Yes, greatly.
If you take their honey before winter/flower die off they will die,it's their food
It's often replaced with plain sugar water which causes malnutrition and die-off.
European domesticated honeybees also outcompete endemic NA bee species, so they are invasive and a net negative to the environment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clMNw_VO1xo
"Beekeeping is good" is marketing by the honey industry, not environmental organizations. Orgs recommend planting flowers for native bees.
Knowing your tendency to try and start struggle sessions - is this supposed to be a gotcha question? Because if so it's a dumb one. It's not really possible to be 100% vegan under capitalism, because there's no way to know enough about the supply chain of every product you buy to be sure that animals weren't harmed in producing it. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't try to mitigate harm. And rather than rigidly sticking to a rule, it's better to evaluate the situation individually - does beekeeping do more harm than good, and if so, is the effort I could put into avoiding honey more efficient than other ways that I could change my purchasing habits?
i did it because exactly half of the vegans i know would agree and the other half will disagree
Half of the vegans that eat honey aren't vegan. They're strict vegetarians who avoid eggs and dairy.
Most of those people also do not understand the environmental impact of the beekeeping industry.
Our media is washed with "save the bees" messaging that is entirely ag agit prop promoting honey, while never mentioning that the practice is what is killing the bees, the native, better pollinating, non-honey making bees.
A "struggle session" over this among vegans is a conversation between people who understand the issue and people who only understand it because of the pro-honey agricultural lobby media campaign.
Anyone who can claim that beekeeping is good or even non-harmful is someone who has done no reading on the topic and cannot detail how it is beneficial.
Struggle sessions can, in fact, exist between people who are right and who are wrong, and starting them on purpose can exist in that context.
That's what I said, yes.
Your phrasing of "Literally trying to start a struggle sesh smh" seemed to imply disapproval, but maybe that was joking.
Struggle sessions that are solved through education like the feral cat one or this one are valuable and don't devolve into people just opinion-flinging back and forth.
You putting quotes around struggle session seemed to imply it wasn't a struggle session. It's a question that's been litigated a million times and seems calculated to divide people and start shit, so yeah, even if there's a right and wrong answer, I kinda question if the person starting it is in fact interested in the answer.
If it ends up with more people informed on exactly why honey isn't considered vegan and the exploitation that comes with the industry, I'm happy with it.
I mean they use the honey/byproduct to feed the larve/babies, so... yeah, it's harm to the animals. But in the grand-scheme of things, most bee-keepers tap the hives and still leave some honey (IIRC) for the hive to use. So I don't think it's necessarily "harm" harm, but wouldn't be vegan if you're hardcore.
my gut instinct is that it's as vegan as cum.
but not nearly as yummy! 😋
No, as its an animal product, but I still identify as vegan and eat honey.
Basically do whatever works for you, a part of veganism is defining your own philosophy in what and how you eat (other than obviously 1° avoiding animals products). Doing what you think is best and analysing what's good should be a core part of it. This includes criticism of both non vegans and typical vegan views.
So I eat honey and my SO doesn't. I'm mostly vegan for environmental reasons and they are vegan for mostly animal welfare reasons. My point is we give them free housing, a good life good food and in return we eat their [long term food storage] - I think that's a pretty sweet, symbiotic deal. In turn they pollinate plants and help cultivate wildlife (where it would be lacking.) I'm from a less plant/insect biodiverse country and buy local so probably it does actually help pollination.
My SO beleives that it's not fair because it can be a stressful process for the Queen and that it actually impedes an local bee biodiversity (so if it is already a biodiverse environment it out competes other bee populations and fucks up the environment). They're from a more biodiverse country so this is probably true if we were to get honey there.
And final point for me, honey consumption is kind of trivial issue in the grand scheme of environmental issues, given my actual carbon footprint lol.
in return we eat their waste
No, you eat their food. Much of that harvested honey gets replaced with sugar water.
I don't know if bees really care. Although they are kinda smart.I tend to be almost entirely vegan, but not obsessive or puritanical over it. That last 1% takes more effort than it is worth.
If I know something has animal products, then I will avoid it, but I'm not reading every label while in the supermarket.Agave syrup can be a decent replacement for honey.
You're right 'waste' is misleading, I meant more 'excess' as they don't starve, but it's their long term food storage, so food is defo more accurate. Yeah I'm kind of in the same boat tbh
It is also not excess, else we would not need to replace it with sugar water. It is their stores over the winter and the sugar water we replace it with causes malnutrition.
The point is you can also have vegan food that is bad for the environment and you can have animal product that doesn't hurt the animal and isn't particularly bad for the environment. Ie coca cola, palm oil, etc etc. So, you do you 😚
you can have animal product that doesn’t hurt the animal
Any "animal product" is a result of seeing the animal more as a resource than an individual being.
Beekeeping is very harmful to the local environment, so if you're going to eat honey, own that but do not spread falsehoods.
I’m mostly vegan for environmental reasons
Resisting the urge to just call you a liberal like I usually do for fun because if you're vegan for environment then you're like me, and educating is more valuable.
Do you know about the effect farming European honeybees in the US and any place they are not native to has on the local environment?
Honeybees tend to keep more pollen and do not do as effective of a job at pollinating compared to wild bee species (most of which do not produce honey), so introducing beekeeping into an area and letting your "stock" go into the fields to drain flowers of pollen and nectar harms those endemic species and severely hurts the balance. European honeybees are considered an invasive species.
Check this video from Earthling Ed out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clMNw_VO1xo
It makes the ethical appeal first, then specifies the environmental impact.
Some do, at some point the European honeybee was wild and we domesticated it because they produce honey as a storage behavior.
Many bee species don't make honey, or some do and are far more aggressive in protection of their hives, or some are solitary and don't form colonies.
There is this American honey producing bee that was cultivated by the Mayans, but deforestation is forcing it into extinction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melipona_beecheii#Agriculture
He's great, I recommend his video on eating the eggs of backyard chickens as well, that's also something a lot of vegans waver on thinking it's more humane.
