What’s All the Buzz About Vegans & Honey?

10 Thoughts About Bees & Honey

Many vegans do not eat honey, because it comes from bees. This is a controversial issue and I’ve pondered it a lot. Here are some thoughts I had on the subject:

What about Honey? Is it ethical to eat it? How does eating or buying honey affect the well-being of bees?

Bees make honey for their own survival, but they do make a lot more than they need. They will keep making honey no matter how much they have already stored, because that’s what they love to do. Ethical beekeepers treat their bees gently and they only take the extra honey that the bees don’t need for survival.
Honey bees are native to Asia. They only exist in America, Europe, Australia, etc., because people brought them there to pollinate crops and provide honey.
If nobody bought honey, beekeepers wouldn’t be able to survie financially, and they are already having a hard time in many areas. Without beekeepers, we wouldn’t have many bees!
Without bees and beekeepers, our pollinated crops would not be productive and we would lose an enormous amount of variety in our diets – most fruits and many vegetables.
So, buying and eating organic and ethically harvested honey is actually very helpful to the survival of bees – and to the farmers that grow all of our fruits and vegetables.
Also, buying and eating all organic foods (and flowers) means that you are supporting healthy bee populations. Bees are being poisoned when they go out to forage on conventional farms. Buy everything organic if you can!
Buying local organic honey from ethical beekeepers insures that you are helping to support local organic agriculture and your local bee population.
Honey is a very healing, medicinal food and a delicious gift from the bees. Raw honey is highly recommended by many health and nutrition experts including Anthony William, the Medical Medium.
It takes a lot of work for the bees to make honey, so be willing to spend enough money on it to support ethical beekeeping practices. Good honey is not cheap!
When treated with respect, honeybees are quite friendly and harmless. Invite them into your life by planting herbs and flowers they love, and providing shallow dishes of water for them to drink. Rocks in the dish help them reach the water without falling in. It is always important to give back to Nature whenever we can, so do what you can to help and honor the bees.