vegan honey

[Al-In-Italy]

The strict vegans I've known seem to have signed up to an ideology. Just as it's extremely difficult to persuade a staunch socialist that capitalism has some good points or a resolute neoliberal that markets don't always get it right, so it's futile throwing facts at a vegan zealot. They just bounce off.

PETA and its ilk believe that all human-animal relationships where humans gain anything are exploitative. That includes keeping animals as domestic pets. Personally, I think our rescue dogs and cats are exploiting us, but I suppose PETA would probably say that just proves I'm a anthropocentrist.

For animal rightists, keeping a hen in captivity and taking its eggs is always exploitation. There is no difference between eggs from battery farms and those produced by your next door's pampered rescued battery hen.

Similarly, no matter how well beekeepers tend their bees, taking honey from them is considered always exploitative. It makes no difference if a human is certain they are taking only what is surplus to what the bees will need over the coming winter and it makes no difference if the honey comes from a dubious Chinese source that produces tonnes a year or from someone down the road who has kept three hives in his back garden for 20 years.

Fanatics of any sort try to avoid facts, logic and the wider view. They can't allow themselves to see shades of grey, because that could call into question their fundamental views of the world and their place in it. Sorting out moral and ethical ambiguities on your own requires far more effort than just joining a particular club and complying with its hard and fast rules.

 

[Webby]

The sad thing is that many people reading this that don't know any better will totally believe it.

 

[user 6228]

Some interesting points: "Honeybees shouldn't pollinate" and "Honeybees hurt the environment" are certainly not what I expected to see!

its another distortion of the truth...

Honeybees are used particularly in the U.S. to enable monoculture where the existing pollinators have been partly or completely destroyed by pesticide use.

so honeybees are enablers to the destruction of the environment by pesticide... yet the peta people then conflate honey production with environment destruction... migratory bee pollenation is the enabler not bees kept for honey production. Its politics by sound bite with an abscence of facts, a paradigm which is now dominant in the U.S.

 

[Zante]

its another distortion of the truth...

Honeybees are used particularly in the U.S. to enable monoculture where the existing pollinators have been partly or completely destroyed by pesticide use.

so honeybees are enablers to the destruction of the environment by pesticide... yet the peta people then conflate honey production with environment destruction... migratory bee pollenation is the enabler not bees kept for honey production. Its politics by sound bite with an abscence of facts, a paradigm which is now dominant in the U.S.

Well... that's really it, isn't it? Peta is very much a political organisation, not an ethics charity.

 

[Gilberdyke John]

its another distortion of the truth...

Snip

Its politics by sound bite with an abscence of facts, a paradigm which is now dominant in the U.S.

Sounds like the Climate lobby

 

[psafloyd]

My wife has just bought a diet book (she becoming a vegan), and it has so many lies in it hard to read without laughing.

1) bees are kept in cramped conditions like battery caged hens
2) We steal their honey
3) In the winter people burn hives because its cheaper than looking after them

I dont know what i can do to show her she is wrong, I have hives in the garden but is there any good literature to show that the normal stuff we do is good for bees and their numbers?

How many of her food stuffs would be available without pollinators like bees?

1 and 3 are utter nonsense and easily disproved. Number 2 is true to an extent, though I would say we remove their excess. You might still argue they don't produce excess for us, but for themselves to allow them to swarm.

 

[alldigging]

3) In the winter people burn hives because its cheaper than looking after them

Just nod and say yes and order some more hives. If she ever moans say you burn them every year and need to keep buying more...

 

[user 6228]

1) bees are kept in cramped conditions like battery caged hens
2) We steal their honey
3) In the winter people burn hives because its cheaper than looking after them

1) is certainly true when you consider large scale overwintering sheds and trucks packed with hives travelling long distance in the U.S.
2) some beekeepers take all the honey and feed/replace with sugar
3) occurs in some places in Northern U.S.

So all are true sometime somewhere. But then asserting these as universal is a logical fallacy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy

 

[MuswellMetro]

Fanatics of any sort try to avoid facts, logic and the wider view. They can't allow themselves to see shades of grey, because that could call into question their fundamental views of the world and their place in it. Sorting out moral and ethical ambiguities on your own requires far more effort than just joining a particular club and complying with its hard and fast rules.

it is not only vegans but every religion seems to enforce some kind of dietary control

fish on Friday, pork, crustacean , holy cows, blood, stimulants like tea and coffee or society imposes its own social taboos on food such as dogs, horse meat etc that other societies find acceptable

is it something in us that needs to follow rules

 

[Obee1]

Supercedure

Or maybe the hive tool test - not sure what you would use to scale up to human size

 

[Hebeegeebee]

1) Battery-bees. Of course they swarm if they have done so well as to need more space - a measure of a successful colony.
2) Yes we do steal surplus honey and we feed them if we take too much. If we didn't the colony would die which no-one wants.
3) Not even worth answering.

Keep on laughing!

 

[madasafish]

No-one would look after stinging insects that produced no honey - except a few nutters.

As opposed to the lots of nutters who keep bees.

 

[domino]

I did the vegan thing for quite a while. Some equate beekeeping to other forms of animal husbandry; which is fair enough to be honest. Although often they misunderstand what their actually talking about in detail and end up looking silly.

It's a shame because the science behind excluding animal protein from your diet having health benefits is pretty overwhelming.

 

[maddydog]

I hope all the people who have such views refuse to reproduce. Short of commiting suicide, not having kids must be the best thing for the planet and all other species?

 

[Dookie]

It's a shame because the science behind excluding animal protein from your diet having health benefits is pretty overwhelming.

Yep your right about that, is anyone a vegetarian here? How do they feel about honey?

 

[Hivemaker.]

Yep your right about that, is anyone a vegetarian here? How do they feel about honey?

As long as the remains of dead bees are strained out of the honey before it is eaten it should be okay for most veggies, organic...ish, everything in it goes type of honey may be different.

 

[bontbee]

I have more time for vegans than veggies - certainly veggies who eat milk, cheese, cream, even fish!

A vegan told me that she wouldn't eat honey because beekeepers cut the wings off their queens. She was somewhat reassured when I said I never have, but when she asked if any bees were killed while managing bees, I couldn't lie.

As per domino - a reduction in the consumption of animal products is something to be applauded (but, come the apocalypse, who will survive on a vegan diet in this part of the world when global trade has ceased to exist?!)

I guess all you can do is correct the myths in the book and then she will have more accurate info on which to base her decision. As a practical aside, it makes catering for the family even more of a pain, with separate menus - and even cooking pans - for the vegan/non-vegan family members!

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

I've never tried a diet of vegans - seems dull, tasteless, lacking in substance and uninteresting to me.

 

[pargyle]

I've never tried a diet of vegans - seems dull, tasteless, lacking in substance and uninteresting to me.

Oh ... I don't know, roast on a spit with a bit of garlic and accompanied by a few broad beans and some jersey royals ... could be quite palatable ...

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Oh ... I don't know, roast on a spit with a bit of garlic and accompanied by a few broad beans and some jersey royals ... could be quite palatable ...

Maybe - but all skin and bones and packed full of them chemicals and supplements they need to keep alive as they don't have a proper diet.....................