Can I keep bees without taking the honey?

[Reub]

Hi everyone,

I am new here. I have been offered a hive to keep at my allotment. Being a vegan I don't eat honey myself, but I definitely support the idea of increasing the bee population. They are so helpful at the allotments too. I have a large quiet area at the rear of my plot backed up against a tall hedgerow which is ideal. So, I was wondering, is it possible to keep a hive and let the bees do their own thing, and leave the honey in the hive to get them through the winter? Will they swarm and fly off in following year?

Sorry for the total newby question! I understand there is much more to keeping bees for me to research, but just wanted to find out in principle if its possible to leave the honey and keep the bees purely as pollinators.

Many thanks.

Reuben

 

[Vergilius]

Hi everyone,

I am new here. I have been offered a hive to keep at my allotment. Being a vegan I don't eat honey myself, but I definitely support the idea of increasing the bee population. They are so helpful at the allotments too. I have a large quiet area at the rear of my plot backed up against a tall hedgerow which is ideal. So, I was wondering, is it possible to keep a hive and let the bees do their own thing, and leave the honey in the hive to get them through the winter? Will they swarm and fly off in following year?

Sorry for the total newby question! I understand there is much more to keeping bees for me to research, but just wanted to find out in principle if its possible to leave the honey and keep the bees purely as pollinators.

Many thanks.

Reuben

Yes... Definately possible... Just don't use a queen excluder or go for a top bar hive.

Ben P

 

[drstitson]

whilst i admire your sentiments firstly may i ask how, as a vegan, you can be happy keeping bees in an artificial "industrial" setting - would you keep hens in a nice warm barn just for the hell of it?

take a look at natural beekeeping trust website - they'll be the sort of thing you are after. (although the floaty dress is optional i gather) and they are running a NB intro course in a month or two.

would you be happy to be raising the bees to produce colonies to sell on at a small profit to support your new hobby? you'll certainly have swarms to deal with.

in my mind all beekeeping is exploitation of the wee creatures. just can be done in various ways.

 

[Ely]

Would swarm control be against your vegan principles? If it is against your principles to eat the honey then the other things involved to keep a healthy swarm controlled hive might also be. I had no idea vegans didn't eat honey, learn something new everyday

 

[greatbritishhoney]

Hi Reub,

It's perfectly possible to keep bees without taking the honey off for yourself.
However, as a vegan the biggest problem you will have is that it is virtually impossible to keep bees without the odd casualty - you will squash the odd bee whilst manipulating the hive and every bee that stings you will die.
A "hands off" approach may work for some beekeepers but I'd say it's a definite no-no on an allotment.
I respect your beliefs but think that you may find it difficult to make beekeeping fit with them.

 

[nottingham]

Yes... Definately possible... Just don't use a queen excluder or go for a top bar hive.

Ben P

I would use a queen excluder from April till late October, or you would have to inspect all the super frames as well as the brood box frames. If they start to run out of space in the brood box (risk of swarming) move the queen excluder to above the super and add another super on top. Yet you could always buy a queen and split the hive.

You take the queen excluder off for the winter, so the queen can stay within the cluster of bees and keep warm. The cluster will climb up the brood box and them the supers while eating the honey stores

I can see why vegan's would not eat meat or milk and cheese. It's all to do with the animals not being wild and there rights taken from them. Honeybee can not survive without the aid of a beekeeper (not for long anyway) because of pests that live to kill the honeybee. No harm comes to the honeybees while making honey or when it is collected. So I find it a bit hard to see why vegan's won't eat honey.

Duncan

 

[drstitson]

"A "hands off" approach may work for some beekeepers but I'd say it's a definite no-no on an allotment."

i forgot to mention that in my reply. most allotment associations will insist on "proper" management to reduce perceived risks to other people.

 

[drstitson]

seriously you're probably best making a bee hotel for solitary/bumble bees.

helps the beasties and they help you with NO exploitation or handling.

 

[Mike a]

I understand you may not want to eat the honey yourself but does that mean you can not process it, jar it and sell it?
If so then may be you might want to consider buying or building a nest box for bumble bees instead as they pollinate far more types of crops and flowers than honey bees.

 

[Moggs]

Hi. You can be sure that your allotment tenancy agreement will require adequate management of your bees, to include swarm control and management of any honey surplus. You can be even more certain that some of your fellow allotmenteers will expect something more than 'pollination services' and will help you with the latter!

 

[nottingham]

in my mind all beekeeping is exploitation of the wee creatures. just can be done in various ways.

How can beekeeping be exploitation of the honeybee if they die after say 3 years without the aid of a beekeeper? Not forgetting the explosion in population of verroa if there were no such thing as a beekeeper.

whilst I also admire your sentiments of a vegan, I couldn't be a vegan myself and if every one of Earth were a vegan we would all have to go out and find our own food in the wild.

Duncan

 

[nelletap]

I guess I had never fully thought through the beliefs of vegans - so I apologise for that. Bees do seem different from some other animals in that we don't restrict or interfere with the way they would want to love naturally - we are more or less landlords for the type of home they would like to have as they need to live together to survive. However, the honey is a product of vegetative/natural type elements which is processed within the bee so I guess that could be the problem for vegans? It is odd that I haven't really thought about it because in some ways my life style seeks out vegan food in the sense that I know it does not contain cows milk - I am allergic to the protein in cows' milk and some chefs put milk in almost everything.
Tricia

 

[susbees]

Dr S, she with the floaty skirt who seems to spend 2/3 of her summer up trees getting her Demeterized bees back and writes unfriendly emails to people who ask her questions (not me...a friend, this week)?

Reub, there are a couple of blogs worth a look on vegan beekeeping. We are vegetarian, do not take all the honey from our bees and are part box hives/part top bar hives so right on the fence on this subject.

You don't say where you are but installing them in a top bar hive with an observation window as a shook swarm might be your best bet. But leaving them to their own devices entirely really isn't an option unless you have a large feral population locally as when your possibly varroa-clad bees swarm you will not be popular with local beekeepers and may watch them succumb to varroa if you can't bring yourself to deal with at least this issue.

 

[greatbritishhoney]

How can beekeeping be exploitation of the honeybee if they die after say 3 years without the aid of a beekeeper? Duncan

Any relationship with an animal where you take something that they naturally produce would surely be classed as exploitation. My sheep would die if I didn't feed and vaccinate them but I'm quite sure that it's exploitation when I take them to slaughter - it just depends whether you agree that it is morally correct to do so.

 

[nottingham]

Any relationship with an animal where you take something that they naturally produce would surely be classed as exploitation. My sheep would die if I didn't feed and vaccinate them but I'm quite sure that it's exploitation when I take them to slaughter - it just depends whether you agree that it is morally correct to do so.

I see your point, yet to have a hand off approach to beekeeping doesn't seem right. Nor does it seem right to not eat honey. It seem to me that it would be like ignoring the wonders of the world. I mean you wouldn't walk through a meadow of flowers with your eyes closed or listen to the morning birds song with your fingers in your ears.

 

[Chris Luck]

Sadly all the usual tosh is being spouted on and on and on until the myth becomes the perceived reality.

All bee colonies do not die if left to their own devices - this is a fact in France and I suspect in the UK as well.

Chris

 

[greatbritishhoney]

I see your point, yet to have a hand off approach to beekeeping doesn't seem right. Nor does it seem right to not eat honey. It seem to me that it would be like ignoring the wonders of the world. I mean you wouldn't walk through a meadow of flowers with your eyes closed or listen to the morning birds song with your fingers in your ears.

I'm quite confortable with my relationship with my bees and other animals. What I'm suggesting is I think that Reub probably wouldn't be. I'm pretty certain that it is nigh on impossible to be a beekeeper without killing the odd bee by mistake - if I were a vegan I wouldn't be happy with that.

 

[Reub]

Thanks for your quick responses everyone. I thought there probably would be a lot more to it than just plonking the hive there and letting them do their own thing!

Sorry, I used the umbrella term 'vegan' fairly loosely. Personally, I agree that the vegan/honey debate is a grey area, and its interesting to hear the opinions of people who actually keep bees. Perhaps vegans are misinformed about honey. I just feel personally, (and with my total lack of knowledge about beekeeping) that the bees work very hard to make the honey, I'd feel a bit unkind taking it away from them. Maybe I've got this wrong, maybe you only take a portion of it? Anyway, I need to read up a bit more. As you all wisely say, there's an important domestic bee/beekeeper co-dependancy going on.

The bumble bee hotel idea is great, thank you, I think that is probably the way to go for my plot.

Thank you all very much for your advice.

 

[For want of a better word]

I do not think beekeeping is in any way or form for you.
The fact that you raised some concern about "keeping" of any animal concerns me.

Simples.... do not do it!

And avoid top bar hives or any other "Natural way" of beekeeping as all will clash with your ideals!

 

[BobH1]

How can beekeeping be exploitation of the honeybee if they die after say 3 years without the aid of a beekeeper? Not forgetting the explosion in population of verroa if there were no such thing as a beekeeper.

Any relationship with an animal where you take something that they naturally produce would surely be classed as exploitation.

Bee colonies only "die afer 3 years" because of man's exploitation. Man introduced Varroa and other pests. As a youngster before varroa I knew a feral colony in a hollow tree that survived for 15 years to my knowledge - until the tree was exploited and cut down.

All UK beekeeping is exploitative as a result and all beekeepers have a responsibility to their bees to support them in their fight against these pests and diseases.