Do you eat honey? If not,why not?
- Thread starter DivineSpark
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Lou
Forum Legend
Nothing new in this article but its well written and researched.
plantbasednews.org
Some excerpts
Is Honey Vegan, And Is It Ethical? The Not-So-Sweet Truth
Honey: how and why do bees make honey, is it cruel, and is it vegan? Plus, 17 plant-based honey substitutes to try
plantbasednews.org
Some excerpts
For most vegans, eating honey is not an option. This is because bees are insects and animals and vegans avoid products made of and by animals.
However, some argue that anyone who eats almonds or avocados should consider the equally harmful processes used to produce them.
Benjamin agrees that eating almonds ‘is just as bad for bees’.
She recommends consumers who want to buy honey should do so if it’s to support local beekeepers, who only own a small number of hives and ‘treat the bees well’. Small-scale farmers ‘only take the surplus’, she claims, and ensure the bees have enough for winter.
I actually worked as a beekeeper, and still find bees to be absolutely fascinating creatures. Honestly without beekeeping the agriculture industry would fail barring the advent of robotic pollination. To a degree the exploitation must occur to secure the high human population, barring us being Thanos snapped to 10% of our current population. Honey and beeswax are byproducts of the pollination industry, which is non-negotiabally mandatory to maintain anything close to our current lifestyle. Most beekeeping profits are actually made from pollination.
Honey is the one thing I am truly on the fence about because I was indoctrinated to believe it is a wonderous health elixir that lasts forever and bestows life extention properties to it's consumer. I don't eat sweet foods so i bit of a non-issue for me.
Honey is the one thing I am truly on the fence about because I was indoctrinated to believe it is a wonderous health elixir that lasts forever and bestows life extention properties to it's consumer. I don't eat sweet foods so i bit of a non-issue for me.
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Lou
Forum Legend
not the agriculture industry as we know it. but that is not such a good model anyway. Farmers would no longer be able to go with monoculture. almond trees would need to be planted along side other plants.
In some places honey and beeswax are separate from the pollination industry. Many commercial beekeepers don't even bother with harvesting honey cause they make enough money just from pollination. At the local farmer market you can probably find a guy who never moves his hives. these small honey operations might even be worth supporting. Although my local guy still loses hives due to CCD so maybe not.
Yeah, I'm not sure about the health properties of honey either.
I mostly don't eat honey because I don't eat sweet food. I consider sugar to be cocaine basically.
mlod54
Newcomer
I suggest that anyone who's questioning this watched this 6 minute video:
Bees feel pain and often beekeepers kill the bees for the winter and breed new ones to save money. They kill them in horrible ways such as pouring petrol into the hive or wrapping it in a bin bag to suffocate them.
Most people would probably be surprised to learn that the entire life's work of a bee is 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey. This means that a normal jar of honey is the work of over 1000 bees! So just think how many bees might have been intentionally killed for each jar!
In order to breed bees, they crush up about 12 male bees for the semen and restrain the queen. They also cut off the queen bee's wings to identify her and to stop the colony splitting into two colonies.
Please give bees the benefit of the doubt and ask yourself why anyone would do this when we don't need honey. Honey bees may actually be bad for the environment and be detrimental to the welfare of wild bees.
Bees feel pain and often beekeepers kill the bees for the winter and breed new ones to save money. They kill them in horrible ways such as pouring petrol into the hive or wrapping it in a bin bag to suffocate them.
Most people would probably be surprised to learn that the entire life's work of a bee is 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey. This means that a normal jar of honey is the work of over 1000 bees! So just think how many bees might have been intentionally killed for each jar!
In order to breed bees, they crush up about 12 male bees for the semen and restrain the queen. They also cut off the queen bee's wings to identify her and to stop the colony splitting into two colonies.
Please give bees the benefit of the doubt and ask yourself why anyone would do this when we don't need honey. Honey bees may actually be bad for the environment and be detrimental to the welfare of wild bees.
Yes. However, the majority of honey consumers aren't aware of these facts. Sadly, pure honey and products containing the former are
described as a wonder ingredient by both food companies and chefs.
500channelsurfer
Forum Legend
Wow! Absolutely wow! + BUMP
That video really opened my mind. I had no idea of the issues of different bee species competing against each other and the western honey bee being an invasive species outside of its natural habitat. I used to feel good every time I saw one of those urban bee keeper peeps. What am I supposed to think now? Should I discourage them from doing beekeeping?
The part about the artificial insemination I already knew happened in fish farming. It is extremely dangerous, as natural reproduction through sex ensures only the most fit sperm fertilize available egg(s), but this type of artificial high-yield artificial insemination or artificial breeding allows also all the unfit and lower quality sperm and eggs to fertilize and create lower quality and sometimes even deformed and retarded offspring, which ruin the future genepool.
That video really opened my mind. I had no idea of the issues of different bee species competing against each other and the western honey bee being an invasive species outside of its natural habitat. I used to feel good every time I saw one of those urban bee keeper peeps. What am I supposed to think now? Should I discourage them from doing beekeeping?
The part about the artificial insemination I already knew happened in fish farming. It is extremely dangerous, as natural reproduction through sex ensures only the most fit sperm fertilize available egg(s), but this type of artificial high-yield artificial insemination or artificial breeding allows also all the unfit and lower quality sperm and eggs to fertilize and create lower quality and sometimes even deformed and retarded offspring, which ruin the future genepool.
