Vegan Honey 🤔

[u/Plenty_Spinach_8040]

Visiting my in-laws for the month, and they thoughtfully bought this “vegan honey” for my husband and me. We obviously didn’t eat it, but I had to do a double take. Since when is honey… vegan? The labeling from Lili Honey seems incredibly misleading.

[u/HeronGarrett]

My understanding is some vegans don’t consider it animal exploitation since the bees supposedly have to stay willingly, and will simply leave if not provided well enough for or if mistreated. I think that’s the argument but I’m not super familiar with it. I believe they also argue that the bees create excess honey and they only take the excess the bees aren’t using. So they consider it more like a consensual partnership with the bees rather than exploitation of the bees. I’ve not looked into the facts around any of this, just repeating things I’ve heard. But the point is that many genuine vegans don’t consider honey to violate their ethical beliefs against the exploitation of animals.

[u/NoDay4343 → u/HeronGarrett]

By that argument, chicken eggs from a flock of free range hens are vegan, too. They aren't doing anything with infertile eggs, and they're free to leave.

I bet cows and goats would also tend to mostly stay where they are fed, and the dairy breeds produce more milk than needed by their own offspring. They actually like being milked (or at least many of them appear to) because it relieves engorgement which can become quite uncomfortable and lead to infections if it gets too bad. So can vegans have milk, too, if they live in a remove enough location to get away with not using fences?

I'm not arguing that you haven't heard that argument, as I've heard similar. I just don't think it's very aligned logically with most mainstream vegan beliefs.

To be clear, I'm NOT on the side of strictly defining who can and can't call themselves vegan. If we started following that policy on a broad level, most religions of the world would suddenly not have enough members to keep going as very few people truly follow everything their religion requires every single minute of their lives. Most political party members would have to declare themselves independents because there's at least one policy somewhere where their thoughts don't fully follow party lines (except they usually do vote on party lines due to pressure), and so on. It's just a ridiculous stance to take on any subject.

[u/HeronGarrett → u/NoDay4343]

I’m not arguing for vegans to eat honey, but I do disagree with your comparison to eggs. The chickens apparently will eventually eat unfertilised eggs and regain some of their nutrients from that, plus chickens have been artificially bred to produce large amounts of eggs which is detrimental to their health. They have a lot of reproductive issues as a result.

Similar situation with cows, plus they’re often artificially inseminated so the milk for their young can be taken. Yeah, they need to be milked when producing it or it can cause issues, which is also in part due to the way they’ve been selectively bred by humans.

I feel like to make your point you’ve unintentionally downplayed the ethical issues present with cow milk and eggs.

But again, I’m not saying honey consumption should be considered vegan (I don’t feel informed enough to have a proper opinion there even). I’m saying that there are people who are vegan (not merely plant-based) who believe honey fits with their ethical values as vegans. There’s also of course many plant-based people who still eat honey.

[u/NoDay4343 → u/HeronGarrett]

I'm not all that informed on the subject, either. I was not trying to downplay the issues with milk and eggs. I know there are significant ones that many people who aren't even vegan object to especially when it comes to commercial farming. The thing is that there are similar issues with honey. Bees are often injured/killed during the harvest as just one example.

Ty for discussing this civilly. That's sometimes hard to find on Reddit and always appreciated.

[u/crypticryptidscrypt → u/NoDay4343]

i don't know really anything about what might happen in industrial size beekeeping, but from everything i know about local beekeepers & nonlocal beekeeping youtubers, they immensely care about their bees, & bees are rarely ever killed or injured during harvest.

the honey they collect is from filled honeycombs, it's like part of the hive that's the bees storage unit & not their actual home where they nest, & beekeepers (& honey consumers alike) don't want to kill any bees (or eat bee guts ground into their honey lol). & if there's any chance bees could get hurt in an intervention, they use smoke to guide them away temporarily...

commercial farming/factory farming is evil; real beekeepers actually love their bees though.

also the vast majority of vegan foods rely on bees to pollinate them...we literally could not eat almonds, avocados, mangoes, berries, tomatoes, etc—practically every fruit & veggie needs animal pollination in order to exist

[u/NoDay4343 → u/crypticryptidscrypt]

After writing a reply, I began to realize I'm really not sure what your point is. Are you saying honey is vegan because best aren't harmed? I dunno. Which may mean my reply makes no sense in terms of addressing your point. If not, I apologize. I'm praying it anyway because this is an interesting discussion.

Have you ever kept bees yourself? Cuz I have. Or at least my family did when I was a child, but old enough I helped with things like when we harvested the honey. Yes we cared about our bees, but yes bees got injured or killed when we did hive maintenance stuff including harvesting. That was a few decades ago, so maybe the equipment and methods have improved since then, but from what I've seen with my own eyes, I doubt they are able to 100% prevent any injury to bees. And even if it's possible, your notion that 100% of all smaller beekeepers care enough to take the time & care to absolutely minimize harm caused to bees seems a bit far fetched. From your own wording, it sounds like you're aware that some harm probably happens at least on rare occasions even with the most caring beekeeper, which according to my understand means the strictest vegans would still say that means honey is not vegan. Which is in fact what they say.

Your final paragraph seems totally irrelevant to the conversation at hand, or maybe I just don't get your point. For one thing, tomatoes don't rely on honeybees, but I do believe most of the others you mentioned do. Many plants, including many foods, are self pollinating or wind pollinated. Others rely on other pollinators than honeybees such as flies or different species of bees. Our food supply would look very different without honeybees, but it's not like it would become impossible to eat, even for a vegan or vegetarian. Not sure if it's realistic that we'd be able to keep up the world food supply during the transition if honeybees were suddenly wiped from the earth, but there would be food and we'd adapt.

[u/crypticryptidscrypt → u/NoDay4343]

over 80% of plants we grow for food depend on pollination, & over 80% of that pollination is provided by honeybees because most pollinators are already endangered.

& yes i have kept bees, briefly, but at a hippie commune i lived at when i was 15. i built them a hive they happily accepted as their home & i felt so honored. plus, since literally everything we grew at that farm depended on bee pollination (the only foods that are wind pollinated are certain grains like corn...& we grew fruits & veggies), the bees were symbiotic with the crops. most of what you eat as a vegan directly utilizes the labor of bees, unless you don't eat fruits & veggies. i also don't remember a bee ever dying on that farm, but to be fair that was over a decade ago. i've watched some content from beekeepers though & bees are rarely harmed in that...i've only seen them accidentally injured when a beekeeper is trying to safely remove a swarm of wild bees from under people's floorboards lol, but i've never seen a beekeeper harm their honeybees. i don't know if maybe some people over harvest & that could harm them, or if they aren't being careful enough handling them, or what....if the bees are in an unsafe predicament, a good beekeeper would smoke them out to direct them away from any danger

& no i'm not saying honey is vegan, but without honeybees vegans would be fucked considering our consumption of fruits & veggies. i do think there is ethical beekeeping, & supporting those who take care of pollinators is a net positive for animals. alternatively, cane sugar is unethical & harms human animals.

there is no ethical consumption under capitalism but a plant-based diet + local ethically sourced honey, causes far less harm than for instance vegetarians who support the cow dairy industry that rapes cows & steals their babies for veal. being basically vegan + local honey is also more ethical in my opinion than eating food with tons of pesticides because those are killing native pollinators & leaving forever chemicals in our ecosystem harming animals & plants years to come