From bee to hive to jar, there’s a lot of buzz around honey in vegan diets. According to the definition, “a vegan is someone who consumes no food that comes from animals and abstains from using animal products.” That means none of that sweet, sweet honey bees work so hard to regurgitate to their colony. Recently, however, local beekeepers have started sharing their thoughts online in an attempt to convince vegans to include honey in their diet. Sure, one can say they have their own interests, but it’s hard to argue with the arguments they’re listing. Continue scrolling to check ’em out and tell us what you think in the comments.
Image credits: David Goehring
Image credits: COD Newsroom
Other beekeepers responded as well:
Image credits: Artur Rydzewski
Image credits: Roberta Tavernati
People had a lot to say about this subject
Whether or not this were directed to vegans (which it is), it's a very informative article where you can learn more about nature, how honey is being made and about the related profession all at once. This is good.
A slightly off-topic honey funny: My local coffee shop uses local honey as one of the available sweetener options, but it is on the counter in a squeeze bottle labeled "BEE VOMIT".
😂(technically, they're right) Thanks for sharing
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My husband is vegan, but he considers honey to be a vegan food. He enjoys it and we use it as a substitute sweetener for coffee and tea since refined white sugar is filtered through cow bone char. Honey can also boost your immune system. My uncles neighbor kept bees so I know how the honey is harvested. And todays artificial hives are actually designed in such a way to make sure bees don't get squished. https://money.cnn.com/2015/03/11/smallbusiness/bees-flow-hive-fundraising/
You can buy vegan sugar. However. Sugar filtered through charcoal (FIFY) made from cow bones is actually greener than burning massive amounts of wood to make charcoal that can only be used once. You might want to look at the environmental costs of some of the so-called "healthy" things you demand when you're a vegan.
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As a vegetarian, I have to say that a vegan who eats honey is nothing like a vegetarian who eats chicken. The whole point of going vegetarian/vegan is reducing your impact and watch what's going into your body.
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Buy local from small batch producers with excellent reputations for humane and ethical practices. Become a member of and support your local food co-op, if you have one in your town. Continue to read information from actual experts/scientists. Then you can feel confident you are making smart and healthy food choices with less impact on the planet!
A couple of years ago, I pulled into my driveway just before dark and lo and behold a giant gathering of bees were hanging off of one of my plum tree's, one of my neighbors came over and offered to spray it with wasp spray, apalled I told them absolutely not, I called the local sheriffs office and got a number for a beekeeper who told me he'd be there first thing in the morning, which he was! It was one of the most interesting things I have ever been graced to see! He explained what he was doing while waiting for the stragglers, as he found the queen and the rest of the hive followed her into the hive box he had brought. He brought me a quart of honey from that hive at the end of summer and it was wonderful. I'm a vegetarian and have no problem eating honey, its so much better for you than any other sweetener. Please support your local beekeepers, they keep our little pollinaters healthy and happy!
Honey is not particularly nutritious. It’s lovely though.
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And the water you drink has been dinosaur pee at one point.
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I eat a plant-based diet though I do not call myself vegan. There are some majorly good points here. One of the main ones is that the vegan diet could not exist if someone wasn't raising bees. Also, bees need 100 pounds of honey per hive to make it through the Winter yet produce twice that. The beekeeper says he only took 50 pounds leaving them 150 pounds which is way more than the 100 they need for Winter. Also, beekeepers take great care of their bees to ensure their survival and make certain none die or are harmed in any way. I support beekeepers and may take up beekeeping myself in order to better pollinate my garden. I do see that some aspects of the vegan philosophy may not be totally thought out.
thank you for sharing this, intresting article. i know that many vegans can be pretty dense, but i do find this information very helpful for whoever likes to keep their minds open. i have been following a vegan diet for the last 5 years and i know i'm not supposed to eat honey but i give a heck about what i'm supposed to do. the only restriction i like to apply to honey is, i only buy from local beekepers (there's plenty where i live) as i'd rather avoid industrial production and distribution.
There's no hard and fast 'rules' to being either a vegetarian or being a vegan. You do you. :)
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I am a beekeeper. The pesticides used on 56 food crops in the US are killing way more honey bees then the beekeeper in day to day management including robbing honey from the hive. Yes the term is robbing, sounds bad, not so much. The pesticides I am talking about are neonictinoids. They have been banded in most of the UK. We still use them in the US. The noenictinoids are killing more bees and they are a major part of the problem and something we can do something about. Let your state and fed reps know how you feel. Eat honey, enjoy honey, work on better ways to help, not harm, the honey bees.
I only know vegans who don't eat honey and thank you for more arguments I can use to call them on their BS :)
Vegans are not perfect. We are just trying to do the besy we can. Just because one reason may not be sound doesn't rubbish the whole ideal. I don't eat honey because I don't like it.
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Local honey is good for hayfever suffers, I've been told it's also good if you suffer from allagies. Does anyone know if that's true?
Ingesting the small amounts of pollen present in local honey is supposed to help desensitize people to plants that cause them allergy. There is no scientific evidence to say it will "cure" allergies, but it does seem to help a bit. ...///... Look at it this way. If you eat local honey, running across the plants you're still allergic to afterwards will be a sneeze or to rather than a half hour allergy attack.
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Consuming honey, eggs, milk, is not eating the animal. It is eating the product produce by the animal but in no way endangers the producer.
Honey is not theft. Harvesting excess honey helps the bees and enriches us.
Who the hell says vegans automatically replace honey with agave?! I love people’s stupid assumptions they love to run with. Ask people questions for once! Dear lord! Agave?! Ewwwww!! Articles like these only are out to jab at vegans. We’re not on the playground anymore! We’re adults. Let’s have conversations versus making huge sweeping statements based on assumptions and our own make believe ideas about other people and their choices! So sick of this s**t.
Theres even vegans now that apperently refuse to eat anything pollinated with bees or other insects...Just...What do you even eat??? Why are they even against the bees doing their completly natural behaviour??
i don't think that can be true because all pollinators are alive: they are either insects or animals. It is impossible to something that hasn't been pollinated by something alive. I don't think this type of vegan actually exists because it would be impossible.
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A very poorly researched article. The beekeepers have made an assumption that vegans are the only people who use agave. According to agave market forecasts, veganism isn't even a market. Furthermore, agave is used to sweeten baked goods consumed by all markets, and it's used as a flavouring in meat products. Maybe the writers of this article would like to reconsider what they don't know? https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/agave-nectar-market
Yeah, as a vegan, I don’t like agave and I think it’s kind of a fad/marketing-driven product, especially in that it has no benefits compared to other sweeteners.
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I was vegan for six months, but now I'm vegetarian and have been for over five years. I never had a problem with boney, mostly because they're just bees and aren't anywhere near the same mentally or anything as a pig, cow, chicken, etc. and I also kind of figured that if people didn't eat honey, it would be worse for them. But insects are literally only able to do what they need to and don't have the mentality to care about any others or themselves. Cows, pigs, and chickens though, it's pretty damn sad when their babies are taken away.
In fact, you can eat the comb too. I don't know if it's widely available, but around here you can get honey with a big chunk of intact comb in the jar with it. It's almost the best part :)
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Once you've had real, organic, unfiltered, raw honey, you can never go back to that nasty honeybear syrup at the grocery store. (PS: raw honey doesn't help with allergies. That's an old wives tale. Sorry. It IS good for sore throats and minor skin wounds.)
I'm not vegan or following any other diet, and I think anyone who turns a diet or lifestyle into a religion is going overboard. I respect people who have principles, but if your principles do more harm than good, it's time to reexamine them.
Some of these vegans go way overboard to the point that what they're saying, or trying to do makes no sense. I'm all for respecting everyone's choices. I even appreciate the discipline it takes to support a vegan lifestyle. But people shouldn't be bullied about their choices, either. Educate and spread your message in a way that is civil, peaceful. In a way that doesn't turn people off before you give them a chance to listen to what you have to say. My aunt's been vegan for more than half her life, and she lives on honey. It's all about knowledge over perception.
Hello , I have a vegan diet and I just wanted to churp up and say how great this article and the comments are ( generally😉) . Everyone seems pretty open to a good debate without getting their knickers in a twist and lashing out on anyone. Well done folks..... long live the bees 🐝
I usually don't like the "saw on the internet" posts, but this one was a good one. Very educational. P.S. I have never once in my life eaten honey (don't know why), but should I ever decide to buy some, I will definitely get it from a local farmer after reading this!
Educational? You mean when it makes the erroneous presumption that there’s a one-to-one causal relationship between vegans and agave consumption? Hardly.
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Bees are animals. Honey is a product made by animals. There’s an abuse factor that bothers some vegans. For example, some industrial honey producers apparently burn their hives at the end of a season. Somehow it is more “cost effective”.
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I am an otherwise strict vegan who believes strongly that vegans are wrong about their stance on beekeeping. Everything I have read in this thread has been truth. My husband started beekeeping this past spring. I have learned so much about these wonderful creatures. Without beekeepers supplying bees to farms, there would be very little left for me to eat. And but for the move toward beekeeping and protecting the honeybee, this vital species could well fail.
More agave is used for one shot of tequila than one jar of syrup. I'm so tired of these vegan "gotcha" articles talking about foods that everybody eats. Agave *can be* grown at scale without destroying the world. Most animal products currently cannot. European honey bees farmed in North America compete with native bees.
There are no native bee species in the Americas. They may compete with wild bees, but they have the same place of origin.
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I like the sentence "...tell me honestly that you have never killed an insect". Yes, check the front of your vehicle after a drive!
What relevance is there? The issue is one of INTENT. You don’t INTEND to kill things with a car. Supporting the meat industry requires support of killing. Supporting apiaries is a grey area, depending on how each apiary treats it’s hives and bees and how you feel about the promotion of honeybees in a land where they are an invasive/introduced species that is displacing native pollinators. Many apiaries promote the “saving of bees” not for any ecological issues (their insects, their “tool of trade” is harming the local ecology), but solely to protect and promote their financial interests.
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I was a raw food vegan from 1983 until 2007. I ended up becoming analyticalally allergic to seeds and tree nuts and soy (probably from over consumption) and allergic to beans too. So, there isn't anyway I could possibly go vegan now. That being said, when PETA sprouted up and Veganism became popular, I lied about being Vegan because I didn't want to be associated with the extreme views of the new Vegans. People would ask me if I was Vegan in health food stores - because they didn't want to associate with those who weren't and it gave me a rock star status. I told every one of them who it mattered to that if that was how they judged people, I didn't want to know them. I prefer open minded people with a variety of interests. But if they all want to hang out together and judge others, let them at it. lol.
What many people don't know is that store bought honey is often replaced in part by corn syrup. Buy from local beekeepers. It helps you, the bees, and the beekeeper!
Not just corn syrup scams. The worst apiaries feed their bee hives sugar water, just to sell the cheapest honey. You can tell the difference in the honey and it’s no good for the bees.
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I am vegan and I eat honey also and appreciate the bees and their keepers.
How is honey not vegan?! There are no animals ‘parts’ in it. If you were very patient and had all the time in the world you could make it yourself by going around to 1,000’s of flowers and extracting the nectar yourself and concentrating it. Have you never pulled a flower tube from a clover flower and sucked the nectar from the end? Pulled a honeysuckle flower from the bush and sucked the nectar from that? Exquisite and a perfect childhood memory of lazy sunny summer days.
I think vegans don't eat honey not because it 'kills them' (which it doesn't) but they simply choose not to consume any products produced by animals...
Wonderful and informative article. Sharing this to Facebook and Google +
Pretty sure all this could have been said without hostility toward vegans, who do much more for the planet and animal welfare than carnivores do. I don't eat meat or dairy, but I do eat honey. I always buy from local providers. The honey is better, I like to support small business, and I know they are taking good care of their bees.
A lot of the industrial honey has been found to only contain a few percent of real honey, and the rest being just plain sugar or corn syrup. If you want the real thing, buy the local producers stuff.
The cheap s**t, yeah. But there’re plenty of real honey varieties on the store shelves. Just don’t buy the stuff that costs the absolute least. Don’t buy the store’s generic “guaranteed value” branded garbage just because of not wanting to spend money on things.
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I love honey, I love bees. There's a local beekeeper in my area that sells in the summer, I stock up.
Well no duh you need to eat Honey. Haven't y'all ever seen the Bee movie? Its very scientifically accurate.
After learning that I would benefit with local grown honey, as I have allergy problems, therefore it must be locally grown not commercial !!!
The problem is not harvesting honey , the problem is harvesting too much of it and in killing the bees with unsafe open feeding... the problem is in mass production which is not safe for the bees... and to be honest - there is no sugar syrup that can replace the honey as the winter food for the bees if you want them to thrive in the spring ... not every beekeeper does this and there are people that leave some honey as winter food - they have my highest respect as that is the only way the beekeeping is done properly... take some, leave some and be grateful for what the bees gave you... this link makes me sad and angry at the same time but it shows what I am talking about... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imAaBcm5INI
Processed honey is inhuman natural honey comes from non stressed happy bees and bee leave it or not you can taste the difference...
Yet another example that proves just show utterly stupid vegans can be.
How sad that some people feel the need to criticize others for what they choose to eat and why. Nobody needs to justify their food preferences to anyone else. Grow up and mind your own frickin' business!!!
Who the hell says vegans replace honey with agave?! Love it when people run with stupid assumptions. Agave: ewwww! No thank you!
When it comes to food, buy as local as possible. Honey is much better when it comes from my neighbor. And beef from the farm ten minutes walk away is also amazing. Vegetables produced in local farm are so tasteful that I might at least consider being vegetarian (still the local meat is so delicious that it may convert vegans). And this applies everywhere. Eat local produced food and you will get rid off lots of pollution from transportation and also you may probably get rid of plastic bags
This article has a lot of truth and bee's are hugely important but there seems to be a bit of ill feeling against vegans which is completely undeserved. As I am sure beekeepers know all too well, the largest danger to bees in industrial farming which the majority of is for meat production. Good on the beekeepers for they are an integral part of keeping humans alive by looking after their bees, my porridge wouldn't be the same in the morning without some honey :)
Vegans are worse than jehovah’s witnesses they get on my TIT.....Put them all on one island preferably in a hurricane region......
Congratulations on dispensing utterly disproportionate hate AND genocidal rhetoric.
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People who don't know s**t pretend they are the most intelligent in the world, little advice for all those people, let vegan live their f*****g lives, they just want to not kill animals in what f*****g univers is this a problem ?
I think you've missed the ENTIRE POINT of this post; Eating agave syrup is killing bats. How is that 'not killing animals'? Let me paraphrase it for you; eating local honey actually helps the bees, doesn't kill the bats who depend on agave syrup to survive, and also helps produce the fruits and vegetables we all love. Nobody is telling you to stop being vegan, they're just saying that eating agave syrup isn't as 'ethical' as you seem to think it is, and honey is actually a better alternative.
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@tyler Duffy: What makes you say that? My uncle is a vegan due to health reasons (he had a heart attack). He’s a teacher, his wife is a teacher, they’re very smart. I wonder if you’ve simply not had enough exposure to vegans. Not all people do it for the environment.
Tbh as a vegan i don't take honey, it's not because of "harming the bees", that would be stupid, it's because of a morale principle, the honey comes from bees being used, you can call this simbiosis, but to me, and many of us, that's just using them. I know many won't agree with me, but that's just how i am and most of the vegans i know are. Though i would NEVER criticize someone else for their opinions on food, just eventually try to inform them and let them take their own conclusions. Not all vegans are extremists, just a small portion that are more "noticeable" because ppl love to talk about extremes positions, just like not all muslims are terrorists...
I honestly am extremely terrified of bees, its so bad I can't even eat honey, it's not that i want them all to go away, no i just want them to stay away from me. So i avoid them a literally all cost
That’s unfortunate. Try to inform yourself. Honey bees and bumble bees are not aggressive. Usually, they do not sting without a considerable amount of harassment. Honey bees die after they sting, so they have no incentive to do so casually. What you may be really afraid of is the wasp family. They are aggressive and can sting repeatedly without suffering consequence.
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Do y'all idiots in the comments actually just believe whatever you see on Tumblr or Reddit, as long as it confirms what you already think?
I try to get actual info, personally. Doesn’t stop me responding to comments on stupid sites like this, though.
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Pure vegan-baiting, omitted counterarguments. Same old misleading, self-serving claims. Honeybees aren't native to N America. Like"dairy" cows, under no circumstances do they "need" us to take and eat their personal food supply, including any "extra," until we manipulate them. Per Olivia Norfolk, lecturer and bee researcher, "Beekeeping... does nothing to protect our wild pollinators. It’s the equivalent of farming chickens to save wild birds.” Domesticated honeybees only perform a fraction of the ecosystem services as native wild pollinators, and not as efficiently - plus they can spread diseases and crowd them out via pollen competition. Industrial colonies for pollination services are only required because wild pollinators have been reduced in part by, remember, BEEKEEPING. Plus, a vegan dietary shift would require 75% less farmland, eliminating need to use monocultures as feed, reducing need for commercial pollination services. truthordrought.com/beekeeping-for-conservation-myths
Mexican Long Nosed Bats were taken off the endangered list in Mexico last year and in the U.S. this year.
Vegans simply choose not to consume any products that have been produced by animals. Simple. Funny how people like to label themselves as 'vegan, but eat honey' . You.are.simply.not.vegan.are.you. (i don't label myself as vegan as i eat what my body wants/needs at a time)
Haha, vegans haven't been shut down. We know how cruel beekeeping is and that honey is their food, not ours. Agave might not be the best substitute but there are other plant sweeteners that are. https://www.facebook.com/AbdelkaderAgazem/videos/10153467937146188/?hc_ref=ARS6iN_tSXlf-QZ6jZg0y31-RMdN_rHACikyGFLGUaLIhiDw4B9yTjXV55JNXv_N28U
Honeybees aren't native to North America. Like "dairy" cows, under no circumstances do animals "need" us to take and eat their personal food supply (a.k.a. interspecific kleptoparasitism), including any "extra," unless we control and manipulate them for that very reason. Exploitation for commodification is then framed as the helpful "solution" when it caused the "problems" being "solved" to begin with. Regarding the false environmental claims being made, per lecturer and bee researcher Olivia Norfolk, "Beekeeping... does nothing to protect our wild pollinators. It’s the equivalent of farming chickens to save wild birds.” When we talk about saving the bees, essentially, people are “worried about the wrong bees.” Domesticated honeybees actually only perform a fraction of the ecosystem services as native wild pollinators, and not as efficiently – plus they can spread diseases and crowd them out via pollen competition.
btw Because all bee products also contain sugar, animal protein and fat, they are unequivocally unhealthy even when labeled "organic," "raw," or "local." "Buying local" seems to be the latest gimmick that places a halo around people who support the enslavement and murder of animals. I agree with the "buying local" philosophy when fruits, vegetables and other plant products are at play. But purchasing products made from locally enslaved animals is just as insane and immoral as buying them from afar. (Moreover, why does the "buying local" way of life only apply to foods? I've noticed that these folks don't mind spending money on computers, cell phones, TV sets, furniture, clothes, cars and other materialistic items from companies located in other states or countries.)
http://store.veganessentials.com/just-like-honey-gluten-free-rice-nectar-p1265.aspx
It's just that some of these arguments are not entirely true. A non-vegan friend of mine was at a bee/honey-tour in Switzerland and he said that many bees die during the process - either when they are squeezed to death or the temperature gap/shock (both by removing the plates), by overworking (because there is not enough honey left), by the sugary water that is given to them instead etc. pp. So even he said after that experience that he tries to avoid honey. He now uses concentrated organic pear (or apple) juice. :-)
All of those cases would be from a beekeeper who is not very good at what they do
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...except the author and these beekeepers clearly don't actually know what veganism is about. I don't know where “a vegan is someone who consumes no food that comes from animals and abstains from using animal products.” comes from, but the Vegan Society UK created the word in the first place. Veganism is not simply a definition of a diet, but a way of living. "The word 'veganism' denotes a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude — as far as is possible and practicable — all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of humans, animals and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals." It's about much more than diet, and it's about doing the least harm "as far as is possible and practicable". This makes a big difference. We don't need Honey.
Mostly, yes. But people will still adjust their adherence to things depending on certain variables, such as financial comfort, how they view other creatures (most people seem to forget that insects are animals), and access to information.
Load More Replies... In case I haven't proven beyond a reasonable doubt how unethical and unnatural it is to consume bee products, think about this: If you were hiking through the woods and came across a hive, would you stick your hand inside and scoop out some honey, or catch some bees mid-air and stroke the pollen from their hair-thin legs? If you did, you'd be stung without mercy. So when does the "natural" part come into play? Whether you're motivated by ethics, environmental concerns or health, and you choose to eat raw, cooked, organic, conventional or junk, being 100-percent vegan is the only thing that matters! If you're looking for something that mimics the taste and texture of honey, buy agave nectar, yacon syrup, bee-free honee, or rice-based honey https://store.veganessentials.com/just-like-honey-gluten-free-rice-nectar-p1265.aspx https://www.beefreehonee.com/
None of those are really like honey. It’s okay to NOT add sweeteners to things, rather than desperately seek honey substitutes. Also, raw sugar is produced in a vegan-safe manner, so there’s that option too, for baking needs. Hell, maple syrup is the only really good liquid sweetener, IMO.
Load More Replies... if given a chance, bees will use THEIR vomit as hive insulation, and food for themselves and for their babies! When bee communities no longer produce huge amounts of quality honey, they're killed off, new communities are created by the beekeepers, and the process starts all over again. Executing unproductive animals is the same standard protocol used by the dairy and egg industries when they murder unprofitable cows and hens. If you consume or use bee products, you are stealing something that does not belong to you, meaning bee exploiters are just as evil as meat-eaters who could care less about any animal, and vegetarians who continue to harm cows and calves for milk, and commodify hens for eggs.
Is this destruction of hives done by ALL apiaries, or just big corporate ones? As far as I’m concerned, most articles pushed out by apiaries are just protecting their financial interest, but some are better than others.
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or just don't eat honey nor agave! the store chain "winco" has bee colonies trapped in a box in the stores and they sell the honey directly from it. I do not want to give them my money.
Honey is bee puke that's been puked into the mouths of three different bees. I don't have to be vegan to not want to eat that nasty s**t.
Well, almost everything you eat as been through a digestive system at some point.
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Manite acid of honey is a protoplasmic poison. It interacts with protein and from this, forms alcohol, ammonia and carbonic acid. As eaten, honey is an atrocious food. It is usually added to starches and proteins as a sweetener. It readily ferments when held up in the stomach with other longer-digesting foods. The byproducts alcohol, ammonia and carbonic acid are deleterious to human health. Honey is, therefore, neither a nutritious nor a safe food.”
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I call Baal$hit. How do you know that taking excess honey from a hive is theft? Have you cracked the code to be able to speak/communicate to bees now and they have personally told you so? I don't think so. By your "logic", if I found a freshly shed skin of a snake while commuting through the woods and picked it up for keeps that would be stealing from the snake. Furthermore, bees do not "grow" anything but appendages and hairs etc, etc. Bees PRODUCE honey.
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Whether or not this were directed to vegans (which it is), it's a very informative article where you can learn more about nature, how honey is being made and about the related profession all at once. This is good.
A slightly off-topic honey funny: My local coffee shop uses local honey as one of the available sweetener options, but it is on the counter in a squeeze bottle labeled "BEE VOMIT".
😂(technically, they're right) Thanks for sharing
Load More Replies... My husband is vegan, but he considers honey to be a vegan food. He enjoys it and we use it as a substitute sweetener for coffee and tea since refined white sugar is filtered through cow bone char. Honey can also boost your immune system. My uncles neighbor kept bees so I know how the honey is harvested. And todays artificial hives are actually designed in such a way to make sure bees don't get squished. https://money.cnn.com/2015/03/11/smallbusiness/bees-flow-hive-fundraising/
You can buy vegan sugar. However. Sugar filtered through charcoal (FIFY) made from cow bones is actually greener than burning massive amounts of wood to make charcoal that can only be used once. You might want to look at the environmental costs of some of the so-called "healthy" things you demand when you're a vegan.
Load More Replies... As a vegetarian, I have to say that a vegan who eats honey is nothing like a vegetarian who eats chicken. The whole point of going vegetarian/vegan is reducing your impact and watch what's going into your body.
Load More Replies... Buy local from small batch producers with excellent reputations for humane and ethical practices. Become a member of and support your local food co-op, if you have one in your town. Continue to read information from actual experts/scientists. Then you can feel confident you are making smart and healthy food choices with less impact on the planet!
A couple of years ago, I pulled into my driveway just before dark and lo and behold a giant gathering of bees were hanging off of one of my plum tree's, one of my neighbors came over and offered to spray it with wasp spray, apalled I told them absolutely not, I called the local sheriffs office and got a number for a beekeeper who told me he'd be there first thing in the morning, which he was! It was one of the most interesting things I have ever been graced to see! He explained what he was doing while waiting for the stragglers, as he found the queen and the rest of the hive followed her into the hive box he had brought. He brought me a quart of honey from that hive at the end of summer and it was wonderful. I'm a vegetarian and have no problem eating honey, its so much better for you than any other sweetener. Please support your local beekeepers, they keep our little pollinaters healthy and happy!
Honey is not particularly nutritious. It’s lovely though.
Load More Replies... And the water you drink has been dinosaur pee at one point.
Load More Replies... I eat a plant-based diet though I do not call myself vegan. There are some majorly good points here. One of the main ones is that the vegan diet could not exist if someone wasn't raising bees. Also, bees need 100 pounds of honey per hive to make it through the Winter yet produce twice that. The beekeeper says he only took 50 pounds leaving them 150 pounds which is way more than the 100 they need for Winter. Also, beekeepers take great care of their bees to ensure their survival and make certain none die or are harmed in any way. I support beekeepers and may take up beekeeping myself in order to better pollinate my garden. I do see that some aspects of the vegan philosophy may not be totally thought out.
thank you for sharing this, intresting article. i know that many vegans can be pretty dense, but i do find this information very helpful for whoever likes to keep their minds open. i have been following a vegan diet for the last 5 years and i know i'm not supposed to eat honey but i give a heck about what i'm supposed to do. the only restriction i like to apply to honey is, i only buy from local beekepers (there's plenty where i live) as i'd rather avoid industrial production and distribution.
There's no hard and fast 'rules' to being either a vegetarian or being a vegan. You do you. :)
Load More Replies... I am a beekeeper. The pesticides used on 56 food crops in the US are killing way more honey bees then the beekeeper in day to day management including robbing honey from the hive. Yes the term is robbing, sounds bad, not so much. The pesticides I am talking about are neonictinoids. They have been banded in most of the UK. We still use them in the US. The noenictinoids are killing more bees and they are a major part of the problem and something we can do something about. Let your state and fed reps know how you feel. Eat honey, enjoy honey, work on better ways to help, not harm, the honey bees.
I only know vegans who don't eat honey and thank you for more arguments I can use to call them on their BS :)
Vegans are not perfect. We are just trying to do the besy we can. Just because one reason may not be sound doesn't rubbish the whole ideal. I don't eat honey because I don't like it.
Load More Replies... Local honey is good for hayfever suffers, I've been told it's also good if you suffer from allagies. Does anyone know if that's true?
Ingesting the small amounts of pollen present in local honey is supposed to help desensitize people to plants that cause them allergy. There is no scientific evidence to say it will "cure" allergies, but it does seem to help a bit. ...///... Look at it this way. If you eat local honey, running across the plants you're still allergic to afterwards will be a sneeze or to rather than a half hour allergy attack.
Load More Replies... Consuming honey, eggs, milk, is not eating the animal. It is eating the product produce by the animal but in no way endangers the producer.
Honey is not theft. Harvesting excess honey helps the bees and enriches us.
Who the hell says vegans automatically replace honey with agave?! I love people’s stupid assumptions they love to run with. Ask people questions for once! Dear lord! Agave?! Ewwwww!! Articles like these only are out to jab at vegans. We’re not on the playground anymore! We’re adults. Let’s have conversations versus making huge sweeping statements based on assumptions and our own make believe ideas about other people and their choices! So sick of this s**t.
Theres even vegans now that apperently refuse to eat anything pollinated with bees or other insects...Just...What do you even eat??? Why are they even against the bees doing their completly natural behaviour??
i don't think that can be true because all pollinators are alive: they are either insects or animals. It is impossible to something that hasn't been pollinated by something alive. I don't think this type of vegan actually exists because it would be impossible.
Load More Replies... A very poorly researched article. The beekeepers have made an assumption that vegans are the only people who use agave. According to agave market forecasts, veganism isn't even a market. Furthermore, agave is used to sweeten baked goods consumed by all markets, and it's used as a flavouring in meat products. Maybe the writers of this article would like to reconsider what they don't know? https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/agave-nectar-market
Yeah, as a vegan, I don’t like agave and I think it’s kind of a fad/marketing-driven product, especially in that it has no benefits compared to other sweeteners.
Load More Replies... I was vegan for six months, but now I'm vegetarian and have been for over five years. I never had a problem with boney, mostly because they're just bees and aren't anywhere near the same mentally or anything as a pig, cow, chicken, etc. and I also kind of figured that if people didn't eat honey, it would be worse for them. But insects are literally only able to do what they need to and don't have the mentality to care about any others or themselves. Cows, pigs, and chickens though, it's pretty damn sad when their babies are taken away.
In fact, you can eat the comb too. I don't know if it's widely available, but around here you can get honey with a big chunk of intact comb in the jar with it. It's almost the best part :)
Load More Replies... Once you've had real, organic, unfiltered, raw honey, you can never go back to that nasty honeybear syrup at the grocery store. (PS: raw honey doesn't help with allergies. That's an old wives tale. Sorry. It IS good for sore throats and minor skin wounds.)
I'm not vegan or following any other diet, and I think anyone who turns a diet or lifestyle into a religion is going overboard. I respect people who have principles, but if your principles do more harm than good, it's time to reexamine them.
Some of these vegans go way overboard to the point that what they're saying, or trying to do makes no sense. I'm all for respecting everyone's choices. I even appreciate the discipline it takes to support a vegan lifestyle. But people shouldn't be bullied about their choices, either. Educate and spread your message in a way that is civil, peaceful. In a way that doesn't turn people off before you give them a chance to listen to what you have to say. My aunt's been vegan for more than half her life, and she lives on honey. It's all about knowledge over perception.
Hello , I have a vegan diet and I just wanted to churp up and say how great this article and the comments are ( generally😉) . Everyone seems pretty open to a good debate without getting their knickers in a twist and lashing out on anyone. Well done folks..... long live the bees 🐝
I usually don't like the "saw on the internet" posts, but this one was a good one. Very educational. P.S. I have never once in my life eaten honey (don't know why), but should I ever decide to buy some, I will definitely get it from a local farmer after reading this!
Educational? You mean when it makes the erroneous presumption that there’s a one-to-one causal relationship between vegans and agave consumption? Hardly.
Load More Replies... Bees are animals. Honey is a product made by animals. There’s an abuse factor that bothers some vegans. For example, some industrial honey producers apparently burn their hives at the end of a season. Somehow it is more “cost effective”.
Load More Replies... I am an otherwise strict vegan who believes strongly that vegans are wrong about their stance on beekeeping. Everything I have read in this thread has been truth. My husband started beekeeping this past spring. I have learned so much about these wonderful creatures. Without beekeepers supplying bees to farms, there would be very little left for me to eat. And but for the move toward beekeeping and protecting the honeybee, this vital species could well fail.
More agave is used for one shot of tequila than one jar of syrup. I'm so tired of these vegan "gotcha" articles talking about foods that everybody eats. Agave *can be* grown at scale without destroying the world. Most animal products currently cannot. European honey bees farmed in North America compete with native bees.
There are no native bee species in the Americas. They may compete with wild bees, but they have the same place of origin.
Load More Replies... I like the sentence "...tell me honestly that you have never killed an insect". Yes, check the front of your vehicle after a drive!
What relevance is there? The issue is one of INTENT. You don’t INTEND to kill things with a car. Supporting the meat industry requires support of killing. Supporting apiaries is a grey area, depending on how each apiary treats it’s hives and bees and how you feel about the promotion of honeybees in a land where they are an invasive/introduced species that is displacing native pollinators. Many apiaries promote the “saving of bees” not for any ecological issues (their insects, their “tool of trade” is harming the local ecology), but solely to protect and promote their financial interests.
Load More Replies... I was a raw food vegan from 1983 until 2007. I ended up becoming analyticalally allergic to seeds and tree nuts and soy (probably from over consumption) and allergic to beans too. So, there isn't anyway I could possibly go vegan now. That being said, when PETA sprouted up and Veganism became popular, I lied about being Vegan because I didn't want to be associated with the extreme views of the new Vegans. People would ask me if I was Vegan in health food stores - because they didn't want to associate with those who weren't and it gave me a rock star status. I told every one of them who it mattered to that if that was how they judged people, I didn't want to know them. I prefer open minded people with a variety of interests. But if they all want to hang out together and judge others, let them at it. lol.
What many people don't know is that store bought honey is often replaced in part by corn syrup. Buy from local beekeepers. It helps you, the bees, and the beekeeper!
Not just corn syrup scams. The worst apiaries feed their bee hives sugar water, just to sell the cheapest honey. You can tell the difference in the honey and it’s no good for the bees.
Load More Replies... I am vegan and I eat honey also and appreciate the bees and their keepers.
How is honey not vegan?! There are no animals ‘parts’ in it. If you were very patient and had all the time in the world you could make it yourself by going around to 1,000’s of flowers and extracting the nectar yourself and concentrating it. Have you never pulled a flower tube from a clover flower and sucked the nectar from the end? Pulled a honeysuckle flower from the bush and sucked the nectar from that? Exquisite and a perfect childhood memory of lazy sunny summer days.
I think vegans don't eat honey not because it 'kills them' (which it doesn't) but they simply choose not to consume any products produced by animals...
Wonderful and informative article. Sharing this to Facebook and Google +
Pretty sure all this could have been said without hostility toward vegans, who do much more for the planet and animal welfare than carnivores do. I don't eat meat or dairy, but I do eat honey. I always buy from local providers. The honey is better, I like to support small business, and I know they are taking good care of their bees.
A lot of the industrial honey has been found to only contain a few percent of real honey, and the rest being just plain sugar or corn syrup. If you want the real thing, buy the local producers stuff.
The cheap s**t, yeah. But there’re plenty of real honey varieties on the store shelves. Just don’t buy the stuff that costs the absolute least. Don’t buy the store’s generic “guaranteed value” branded garbage just because of not wanting to spend money on things.
Load More Replies... I love honey, I love bees. There's a local beekeeper in my area that sells in the summer, I stock up.
Well no duh you need to eat Honey. Haven't y'all ever seen the Bee movie? Its very scientifically accurate.
After learning that I would benefit with local grown honey, as I have allergy problems, therefore it must be locally grown not commercial !!!
The problem is not harvesting honey , the problem is harvesting too much of it and in killing the bees with unsafe open feeding... the problem is in mass production which is not safe for the bees... and to be honest - there is no sugar syrup that can replace the honey as the winter food for the bees if you want them to thrive in the spring ... not every beekeeper does this and there are people that leave some honey as winter food - they have my highest respect as that is the only way the beekeeping is done properly... take some, leave some and be grateful for what the bees gave you... this link makes me sad and angry at the same time but it shows what I am talking about... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imAaBcm5INI
Processed honey is inhuman natural honey comes from non stressed happy bees and bee leave it or not you can taste the difference...
Yet another example that proves just show utterly stupid vegans can be.
How sad that some people feel the need to criticize others for what they choose to eat and why. Nobody needs to justify their food preferences to anyone else. Grow up and mind your own frickin' business!!!
Who the hell says vegans replace honey with agave?! Love it when people run with stupid assumptions. Agave: ewwww! No thank you!
When it comes to food, buy as local as possible. Honey is much better when it comes from my neighbor. And beef from the farm ten minutes walk away is also amazing. Vegetables produced in local farm are so tasteful that I might at least consider being vegetarian (still the local meat is so delicious that it may convert vegans). And this applies everywhere. Eat local produced food and you will get rid off lots of pollution from transportation and also you may probably get rid of plastic bags
This article has a lot of truth and bee's are hugely important but there seems to be a bit of ill feeling against vegans which is completely undeserved. As I am sure beekeepers know all too well, the largest danger to bees in industrial farming which the majority of is for meat production. Good on the beekeepers for they are an integral part of keeping humans alive by looking after their bees, my porridge wouldn't be the same in the morning without some honey :)
Vegans are worse than jehovah’s witnesses they get on my TIT.....Put them all on one island preferably in a hurricane region......
Congratulations on dispensing utterly disproportionate hate AND genocidal rhetoric.
Load More Replies... People who don't know s**t pretend they are the most intelligent in the world, little advice for all those people, let vegan live their f*****g lives, they just want to not kill animals in what f*****g univers is this a problem ?
I think you've missed the ENTIRE POINT of this post; Eating agave syrup is killing bats. How is that 'not killing animals'? Let me paraphrase it for you; eating local honey actually helps the bees, doesn't kill the bats who depend on agave syrup to survive, and also helps produce the fruits and vegetables we all love. Nobody is telling you to stop being vegan, they're just saying that eating agave syrup isn't as 'ethical' as you seem to think it is, and honey is actually a better alternative.
Load More Replies... @tyler Duffy: What makes you say that? My uncle is a vegan due to health reasons (he had a heart attack). He’s a teacher, his wife is a teacher, they’re very smart. I wonder if you’ve simply not had enough exposure to vegans. Not all people do it for the environment.
Tbh as a vegan i don't take honey, it's not because of "harming the bees", that would be stupid, it's because of a morale principle, the honey comes from bees being used, you can call this simbiosis, but to me, and many of us, that's just using them. I know many won't agree with me, but that's just how i am and most of the vegans i know are. Though i would NEVER criticize someone else for their opinions on food, just eventually try to inform them and let them take their own conclusions. Not all vegans are extremists, just a small portion that are more "noticeable" because ppl love to talk about extremes positions, just like not all muslims are terrorists...
I honestly am extremely terrified of bees, its so bad I can't even eat honey, it's not that i want them all to go away, no i just want them to stay away from me. So i avoid them a literally all cost
That’s unfortunate. Try to inform yourself. Honey bees and bumble bees are not aggressive. Usually, they do not sting without a considerable amount of harassment. Honey bees die after they sting, so they have no incentive to do so casually. What you may be really afraid of is the wasp family. They are aggressive and can sting repeatedly without suffering consequence.
Load More Replies... Do y'all idiots in the comments actually just believe whatever you see on Tumblr or Reddit, as long as it confirms what you already think?
I try to get actual info, personally. Doesn’t stop me responding to comments on stupid sites like this, though.
Load More Replies... Pure vegan-baiting, omitted counterarguments. Same old misleading, self-serving claims. Honeybees aren't native to N America. Like"dairy" cows, under no circumstances do they "need" us to take and eat their personal food supply, including any "extra," until we manipulate them. Per Olivia Norfolk, lecturer and bee researcher, "Beekeeping... does nothing to protect our wild pollinators. It’s the equivalent of farming chickens to save wild birds.” Domesticated honeybees only perform a fraction of the ecosystem services as native wild pollinators, and not as efficiently - plus they can spread diseases and crowd them out via pollen competition. Industrial colonies for pollination services are only required because wild pollinators have been reduced in part by, remember, BEEKEEPING. Plus, a vegan dietary shift would require 75% less farmland, eliminating need to use monocultures as feed, reducing need for commercial pollination services. truthordrought.com/beekeeping-for-conservation-myths
Mexican Long Nosed Bats were taken off the endangered list in Mexico last year and in the U.S. this year.
Vegans simply choose not to consume any products that have been produced by animals. Simple. Funny how people like to label themselves as 'vegan, but eat honey' . You.are.simply.not.vegan.are.you. (i don't label myself as vegan as i eat what my body wants/needs at a time)
Haha, vegans haven't been shut down. We know how cruel beekeeping is and that honey is their food, not ours. Agave might not be the best substitute but there are other plant sweeteners that are. https://www.facebook.com/AbdelkaderAgazem/videos/10153467937146188/?hc_ref=ARS6iN_tSXlf-QZ6jZg0y31-RMdN_rHACikyGFLGUaLIhiDw4B9yTjXV55JNXv_N28U
Honeybees aren't native to North America. Like "dairy" cows, under no circumstances do animals "need" us to take and eat their personal food supply (a.k.a. interspecific kleptoparasitism), including any "extra," unless we control and manipulate them for that very reason. Exploitation for commodification is then framed as the helpful "solution" when it caused the "problems" being "solved" to begin with. Regarding the false environmental claims being made, per lecturer and bee researcher Olivia Norfolk, "Beekeeping... does nothing to protect our wild pollinators. It’s the equivalent of farming chickens to save wild birds.” When we talk about saving the bees, essentially, people are “worried about the wrong bees.” Domesticated honeybees actually only perform a fraction of the ecosystem services as native wild pollinators, and not as efficiently – plus they can spread diseases and crowd them out via pollen competition.
btw Because all bee products also contain sugar, animal protein and fat, they are unequivocally unhealthy even when labeled "organic," "raw," or "local." "Buying local" seems to be the latest gimmick that places a halo around people who support the enslavement and murder of animals. I agree with the "buying local" philosophy when fruits, vegetables and other plant products are at play. But purchasing products made from locally enslaved animals is just as insane and immoral as buying them from afar. (Moreover, why does the "buying local" way of life only apply to foods? I've noticed that these folks don't mind spending money on computers, cell phones, TV sets, furniture, clothes, cars and other materialistic items from companies located in other states or countries.)
http://store.veganessentials.com/just-like-honey-gluten-free-rice-nectar-p1265.aspx
It's just that some of these arguments are not entirely true. A non-vegan friend of mine was at a bee/honey-tour in Switzerland and he said that many bees die during the process - either when they are squeezed to death or the temperature gap/shock (both by removing the plates), by overworking (because there is not enough honey left), by the sugary water that is given to them instead etc. pp. So even he said after that experience that he tries to avoid honey. He now uses concentrated organic pear (or apple) juice. :-)
All of those cases would be from a beekeeper who is not very good at what they do
Load More Replies... ...except the author and these beekeepers clearly don't actually know what veganism is about. I don't know where “a vegan is someone who consumes no food that comes from animals and abstains from using animal products.” comes from, but the Vegan Society UK created the word in the first place. Veganism is not simply a definition of a diet, but a way of living. "The word 'veganism' denotes a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude — as far as is possible and practicable — all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of humans, animals and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals." It's about much more than diet, and it's about doing the least harm "as far as is possible and practicable". This makes a big difference. We don't need Honey.
Mostly, yes. But people will still adjust their adherence to things depending on certain variables, such as financial comfort, how they view other creatures (most people seem to forget that insects are animals), and access to information.
Load More Replies... In case I haven't proven beyond a reasonable doubt how unethical and unnatural it is to consume bee products, think about this: If you were hiking through the woods and came across a hive, would you stick your hand inside and scoop out some honey, or catch some bees mid-air and stroke the pollen from their hair-thin legs? If you did, you'd be stung without mercy. So when does the "natural" part come into play? Whether you're motivated by ethics, environmental concerns or health, and you choose to eat raw, cooked, organic, conventional or junk, being 100-percent vegan is the only thing that matters! If you're looking for something that mimics the taste and texture of honey, buy agave nectar, yacon syrup, bee-free honee, or rice-based honey https://store.veganessentials.com/just-like-honey-gluten-free-rice-nectar-p1265.aspx https://www.beefreehonee.com/
None of those are really like honey. It’s okay to NOT add sweeteners to things, rather than desperately seek honey substitutes. Also, raw sugar is produced in a vegan-safe manner, so there’s that option too, for baking needs. Hell, maple syrup is the only really good liquid sweetener, IMO.
Load More Replies... if given a chance, bees will use THEIR vomit as hive insulation, and food for themselves and for their babies! When bee communities no longer produce huge amounts of quality honey, they're killed off, new communities are created by the beekeepers, and the process starts all over again. Executing unproductive animals is the same standard protocol used by the dairy and egg industries when they murder unprofitable cows and hens. If you consume or use bee products, you are stealing something that does not belong to you, meaning bee exploiters are just as evil as meat-eaters who could care less about any animal, and vegetarians who continue to harm cows and calves for milk, and commodify hens for eggs.
Is this destruction of hives done by ALL apiaries, or just big corporate ones? As far as I’m concerned, most articles pushed out by apiaries are just protecting their financial interest, but some are better than others.
Load More Replies... or just don't eat honey nor agave! the store chain "winco" has bee colonies trapped in a box in the stores and they sell the honey directly from it. I do not want to give them my money.
Honey is bee puke that's been puked into the mouths of three different bees. I don't have to be vegan to not want to eat that nasty s**t.
Well, almost everything you eat as been through a digestive system at some point.
Load More Replies... Manite acid of honey is a protoplasmic poison. It interacts with protein and from this, forms alcohol, ammonia and carbonic acid. As eaten, honey is an atrocious food. It is usually added to starches and proteins as a sweetener. It readily ferments when held up in the stomach with other longer-digesting foods. The byproducts alcohol, ammonia and carbonic acid are deleterious to human health. Honey is, therefore, neither a nutritious nor a safe food.”
Load More Replies... I call Baal$hit. How do you know that taking excess honey from a hive is theft? Have you cracked the code to be able to speak/communicate to bees now and they have personally told you so? I don't think so. By your "logic", if I found a freshly shed skin of a snake while commuting through the woods and picked it up for keeps that would be stealing from the snake. Furthermore, bees do not "grow" anything but appendages and hairs etc, etc. Bees PRODUCE honey.
Load More Replies... Why did people downvote you for pointing out a fact?
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