Why do vegans not eat honey? can bees be treated badly? how so?!
Answers: thanks.
The basic explanation is that vegans don't believe in exploiting animals for their own benefit. Bees produce honey for themselves, not for people. Bees don't voluntarily give us the fruits of their labor and many are killed in the process of harvesting honey.
The answers you are going to get are going to be full of jargon about how the honey is "stolen" from the hive and such, but in reality, beekeepers know exactly what they are doing. The hives are a MAJOR investment, and to lose very many would be financial suicide for the beekeeper. Beekeepers simply learn the natural cycle of the bees and harvest the honey at the appropriate time. I'm sorry, but they are not "exploited." They are insects, for Peet's sake! Pure instinct!! NO emotion!!!
Wolf: I have to say, you cannot refer to the bees as "slave" or "captive" colonies. The bees fly off every day in the course of the very nature of their pollination work. The bees could easily (and sometimes do) not come back to the hive.
Like I said, it's just instinct, and quite interesting actually, too. Did you know at the door of each hive, guard bees check the "I.D." of other bees trying to enter to make sure they belong to that particular colony? How do they know?
nectar is collected from the flowers by the bees and it is stored in a 2nd stomach, inside the bees' bodies. They go back to their hive and essentially "throw up" the nectar into the honeycomb.
Just like with cows' milk (or goats' milk), or chicken eggs... it was once inside the animal, hence vegans do not eat it.
Bees are smoked out of their hives when it is time for harvest resulting death for many of them.
Wow the day i don't eat honey because of a bee.....How do you do it!
I am not a vegan, but I choose not to consume honey.
Bees are animals too, why should they be any different than a cow or chicken?
I'd compare it to taking milk from a cow, since in both cases we take something that the animal made for itself (or it's young) and try to make money off of it.
I would have thought that "Me hungry like a wolf" would have provided you with this website,
http://www.vegetus.org/honey/honey.htm
since he believes so strongly in the watered-down definition given on there...
But in your case it should help explain why most vegans don't consume honey.
Edit:
@ Meso Stupid
I provided that site to explain why vegans don't consume honey, you used it to define a philosophy, when it isn't even completely accurate.
What makes you think that the site is meant for people like you bend on making a group of people look like hypocrites? Sorry it's meant to explain why some vegans don't eat honey, and that definition holds no ground in your arguments because it's only partly right.
Its mostly because of the smoke that some people use at harvest time, it does harm them and it does kill some.
not all farmers use that method, but often honey is mixed and its almost impossible to be sure it hasnt been used.
People do not need honey, bees do.
When they take the honey, they replace it with cheap corn syrup and it makes the bees sick.
Good question. They feel the bees are being exploited if the honey is harvested for human consumption, though no harm is done to the bees. Those same people will eat vegetables that are pollinated by slave hives of captive bees that are moved from state to state and crop to crop to be used for pollination.
Double standard? You decide.