Is honey considered suitable for vegans? It is after all an animal by-product.
I just asked a vegetarian. OK for vegetarians, NOT OK for vegans. Vegans eat no aminal products at all. I had to ask someone else as I am an omnivore.
but it is’nt animal in origin. it is made from pollen/nectar. it is made by bees, not from them
Read the link I gave you. It explains.
autz:
While I cannot speak on her moral or ethical statements, I can tell you that Joanne Stepaniak makes several factual mistatements in the link you provide.
As an amateur beekeeper I will address these.
When one takes this statement into account some of her later statements are in error.
This is not true. The bees do not digest or partially digest the nectar. They have a storage organ specifically for the transporting and processing of nectar into honey.
Calling honey bee vomit is factually innacurate, and quite frankly seems to me an attempt to gross people out, nor is honey the sole source of nutition through the winter. It is only a part of their food source for some of their bees. The overwintering hive consumes both honey and pollen, primarily pollen in the later winter months (it’s the food for larval and young bees. A good portion of the hive goes into a kind of hibernation or intentional die off to save energy)
This is innacurate. Bees pollinate plants to serve human needs. Honey bees are not indigenous to the U.S.
This is both naive and untrue.
As a beekeeper I am in perfect symbiosis and harmony with my bees. I need them, and they need me and we each get something out of the deal.
I provide them a home (and they are free to leave if they are unhappy with the arrangement.) By building the hive and stocking it with their essential needs in terms of beespace (a whole other discussion,) I make it as inviting as possible so that they will stay and devote their time to gathering honey rather than hivebuilding.
I own the hive. I put it there. The bees moved in. Wild bees are in deep trouble because of diseases like foulbrood and tracheal mites. Essentially all the honeybees you see are from kept hives. The wild bees do not make it for long because of these diseases. Wild hives tend to die out in 3-4 years do to mites and foulbrood. Both of these diseases are treatable (and I treat them,) organically. Fatty sugarcakes do no harm to the environment but retard the tracheal mites reproductive cycle and allow an infested hive to recover. I destroy all foulbrood infestations. If I did not do these things the hive would die.
Not only is my intent to do no harm. My intent is to do well by the bees. If I put the effort into the hive body that I built, they will fill it with honey, of which I may take a portion. You see, I’ve done some of the work for them. I have not coerced them into staying. I have actively looked after their interests. I am entitled to a portion of the honey by the nature of the symbiosis I share with my bees.
This is simply false. I need not move any bees to collect honey. Like virtually all beekeepers I collect my honey in the following manner.
There are normally two hive bodies on the hive. These they fill to raise their young and to store food and pollen and such. When the bees are doing very well and the hive is strong and a honey flow is on, I add a third hive body.
As bees will do, they will fill this third hive body eclusively with honey (provided I’ve done things properly and the hive is as strong as I think.
After a week or so, I lift the hive body up, and put a piece of cardboard so that no bees can enter the honey body (called a “super”) from underneath. Then I place a one way door at the top of the hive.
Bees exit the super, and no longer enter it from the bottom. After two days it is completely empty of bees, and I may remove it and harvest honey. Not a single bee need be injured.
Additionally her statement about hive manipulations injuring bees is also false. Most beekeepers can and do do hive manipulations specifically without injuring any bees. Injured bees get mad. We try to avoid this. It doesn’t take much skill to be gentle.
Untrue. This is how they pick up foulbrood and tracheal mites, and they wouldn’t be doing it if we didn’t bring them into the country in the first place. And they would die out if we did not tend them.
Sadly this is untrue. The bee diseases have spread so dramatically to the epidemic proportions that they are specifically because we use bees to pollinate.
These hives are typically not cared for or manipulated, and thus virtually all of them suffer from foulbrood or mites. They are sealed and transported across the country to pollinate during different times, and they get no ventilation at this time, killing many many bees. Part of the management of such an operation plans on having hives decimated during transport. They then recover at the next pollination site, and are devastated as they move again. This action is in lieu of proper treatment and hive manipulation.
Ok. Nobody’s making you use it. Least of all me. I simply object to the ignorant and false statements made against those who keep bees. There is no justification to using honey, but none is needed. No harm is intended. No harm is done. The bees benefit from the symbiotic relationship. They get more out of the relationship than most plants get, so I see no call for condemning honey on the grounds that the practice of beekeeping harms bees when the opposite is provably correct.
As anybody knows, the practice of raising sugarcane is devastating to the environment in which it is done. Typically it is grown in southern lowlands near rivers and other places with rich dark soil. The wetlands need to be cleared and drained. There is active fertilization and insect treatment which leeches into water systems, etc etc.
My bees aren’t exploited. They can leave. They stay because net of everything I provide them a favorable environment in which they can flourish, and we live in symbiosis.
I try not to be all touchy feely about this, but beekeeping is a perfect example of the way we should be living, of the way we should be keeping the earth.
My existance with the bees, benefits the bees. The bees benefit me. They benefit the rest of the environment.
None of this would be happening if I wasn’t in the picture tending the bees. I do this for the share of the honey for which I am entitled, and for the pleasure of doing it, and doing it well.
There is a net gain to my environment because of my beekeeping.
Can this be said of many other activites?
Personally, because of these facts I beleive Vegans are wrong and ignorant to reject honey.
If you are trying to tread lightly on this earth, give more than you take, live in harmony, and be a benefit rather than a harm, than I challenge you to find me another activity that does these things as well as beekeeping.
Rather than disparaging or shunning honey and beekeeping, these things should be a jewel of achievement to be displayed by pride by someone who espouses the ethics Vegans claim to.
Interesting and very informative accoutn, Scylla, thanks.
I’m particularly intrigued because it completely contradicts the assertions that another beekeping doper gae me in an earlier thread on this topic. I’ll see if I can get a link.
Very interesting, Scylla.
Can you explain what foulbrood is exactly? (It sound like something out of MacBeth).
Also: what is a fatty sugarcake and how do you apply it?
Oh yes - and I LOVE honey.
Haha! It turns out that the other poster was none other than… Scylla!
and
Interesting eh?
Nice post, Scaylla. The wife and I are interested in keeping bees and may start some day soon. As it is, we call our spread “The BeeSkep Ranch”. Might as well live up to the name.
Your info jibes with what we know about it. Wife’s cousin is a beekeeper and we learn what we can from him. No bees are harmed in his operation.
I want the honey for my home-brewed ales! 
Anyway, back to the “debate”!
Fagjunk Theology: Not just for sodomite propagandists anymore.
Scylla: I’m assuming you live in North America, but if I’m wrong I know someone will correct me. If that’s the case, you’re saying that honeybees were brought here by (presumably) Europeans? That’s fascinating, and I had no idea that was the case. I have honestly believed that if there were no bees you would not have apples and plums and other good stuff.
Which leads to my question: How were plants pollinated before the honey bees were brought? To put it another way, when people brought honey bees, were they displacing another insect species that had previously done the pollination? Surely all of the North American plants can’t have been self-pollinating or have wind-borne pollen?
European honeybees are only one of a huge number of bee species. There were dozens of native bee species before European arrival.
My understanding is that there were no hive bees. We had bumblebees, but that was it.
Foulbrood is a bacterial disease. It attacks the larvae of bees, and basically rots them as they grow. As the bees tend the young they spread the disease. They pick it up in contact with other bees and with flowers they pollinate. It is treatable only by destroying infected portions of the hive, and sadly sometimes entire hives.
Fatty sugarcakes are the new recommended treatment for tracheal mites. We used to use these apistan strips which were an inseciticide which killed the mites.
However, bees do not live long, and the tracheal mites reproductive cycle depends on synchronization with the bees.
By mixing sugar and lard, (or Crisco oil) into cakes and placing it in the hive, the bees consume it, and the chemical interferes with the signalling of the mites’ reproductive cycle in some way that I don’t understand, and the mites die off.
Not sure what you mean by ‘hive bees’, but there are several social bee species native to North Am that I am aware of.
Mangetout:
Ahhh, clearly you are justifiably concerned. Two things to be aware of though. I am writing from a different perspective in my ealier post, essentially describing commercial bee operations which work to maximize honey production.
Like the bee pollination outfits, these comercial outfits are less concerned with the wellbeing of their hives.
In my more recent post I am speaking from the perspective of an amateur beekeeper hobbyist who cares for and enjoys tending his bees.
Also, my philosophy of beekeeping has also changed with time. As of 2001 I was only in my second year of hivekeeping.
Now I am a savvy expert of four years or so.
For example, I have learned how to smoke a hive properly. Previously I got a bonfire going in my smoker and blasted the bees with hot smoke, committing massive apicide in my clumsiness. Now I use less and cooler smoke avoiding the overkill.
My manipulations have also gotten much less frequent and more adroit, and I feel confident that I am moving frames around without killing bees.
Seeing as now I can manipulate the hive without killing and pissing off bees, things are better for all concerned.
Also, after a couple of years getting 50 pounds of honey from a hive, I’ve learned that there is really only so much honey I can use in a gien year, and it is unnecessary for me to kill frames of larvae.
But yes, I still do kill off drone cells and queen cells to prevent swarming. And, I do requeen every second year or so.
My posts may seem contradictory, and perhaps they are, but they really are both true. It depends on what your philosophy is and what kind of operation you’re running.
Personally, I don’t really think much of killing queen cells, or drone cells, or even queens.
I think from a bee’s perspective they are not really individuals. The hive is the actual organism. Treating parts of the organism for the whole’s benefit may be no worse than clipping a fingernail.
So, to answer your challenge: 1. I was writing from a different perspective.
2. I know more now than I did then. I’ve gotten better
3. Whether your a beneficial type beekeeeper or a beeslavedriver depends on how you run your shop.
That I am unaware of. Can you give me an example?
I do know that we have several species of large bee (bumblebee) that is social to a certain degree in that four or five may live in close proximity in cooperative manner, but I did not know that we had any indigenous bees that formed hives like honeybees.
We have wasps that do that, but not indigenous bees that I’m aware of.
Could you name me, or show me some indigenous social bee species?
Bumblebees, yellowjackets, flies, and such did the job before honeybees.
We also brught over a lot of European plants and such that are more dependant on honeybees than indigenous species to my understanding.
Scylla - both were great posts. When I read the first one, way back when, I thought it was a little tongue in cheek.
Also, great point about sugar cane. I grew up around ag, and I’m sick and tired of people think plants just magically grow up out of the ground and roll themselves to the farmer’s market with no trouble to any living thing.
The two major groups of North American social bees are the bumblebees and the sweat bees, both of which exhibit varying degrees of social behaviour amongst species, from solitary through to truely scoial with specific breeding queens.