Why is honey considered "non-vegan"?!
Answers: Ok, I understand the reasons for everything else vegans won't eat or use such as eggs, or leather, but honey totally confuses me. Bees are not harmed by beekeepers when they remove the honey. The bees don't actually make the honey, they only collect it from flowers. So why do some vegans consider honey off limits?
I guess if some bees are harmed (accidentally crushed in the harvesting of the honey) then that's why some vegans reject honey, but that's kind of silly, in my opinion. Windshields kill many times more bugs than the honey industry, but most of these vegans are still driving around in their hybrids, cranking their Phish CD's and sipping their soy lattes, murdering insects willy nilly on their way to see the vagina monologues.
I guess just because it's an animal product. (I thought that bees do make honey.)
Because they think its exploiting the bees and they don't want to hurt the poor little bee's feelings.
i think it's one of those things you can decide for yourself if you're vegan... i've read stories about how bees are mistreated, but you have some good points about how they don't actually make it. i still eat it!
Veganism seeks to eliminate animal exploitation based on the belief that animals have the capacity for suffering. Bees do, in fact, make honey from the nectar they collect from flowers. They make it for themselves and the vegan view is that it's simply not ours to take. Bees are smoked out of their hives for collection and some die in the process. Vegans don't use animal products and honey is an animal product.
You will find considerable debate within the vegan community about honey, though, and some will accept honey and still consider themselves vegan. To me, because there are good plant based alternatives available, there's no reason to eat honey.
Your confusion is not so much an issue of veganism as it is an issue of entomology. Unquestionably, bees DO make honey. What they collect from flowers is nectar, which they make into honey by processing it with their mouths and stomachs. They chew the nectar up in their mouths and combine it with enzymes that they produce in their own bodies.
Honey is made by bees to feed bee larvae, just the same way that cows make milk to feed their babies. That's why it's not "vegan."
Also, saying that bees aren't harmed by beekeepers is just like saying that any other animal isn't harmed by its keeper. Sometimes this is true, sometimes it's not. Either way, the bees are making money for their own use, and it's being taken by humans. Thus, vegans consider it exploitation.
I got this off the PETA 2 website. Check it out
Honey—Sure, honey tastes sweet, but you'll get a bad taste in your mouth when you learn how it's "harvested."
From a former beekeeper: "[T]ypically, beekeepers are gloved and netted to avoid stings (nearly every bee who stings will die due to her entrails being pulled from her body attached to her stinger.) Then the hives are opened as quickly as possible and the bees are ‘smoked.' Smoke from a smoldering fire carried in a ‘smoker' is pumped into the hive and the bees are ‘calmed.' In spite of this, the combs are pulled quickly and many bees are crushed in the process. When a bee is hurt, she releases a chemical message that alerts and activates the hive members who proceed to attack the intruder—giving their lives in the process."
Honey is an animal product which is made by bees for bees not humans. The reason that bees are considered exploited for this product is that the beekeepers remove their natural food and feed them sugar water instead. This is as unhealthy for the bees as it is for humans. PETA probably has information on it.
Vegans don't eat, wear, or use animal products. Bees are living beings. Honey is an animal product.
Because bee's make honey, bee's work there *** off to make honey and than humans eat it...