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Honey (mander.xyz)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/science_memes@mander.xyz
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[–] 95 points 2 years ago (97 children)

I feel like bees are a bit of a grey area. We're not eating them, we're kind of like landlords that give them a nice place to stay and they pay rent in honey. I'm not vegan so I'm not quite sure what the rationale is for bee stuff.

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  • [–] 93 points 2 years ago (12 children)

    Best friend's a vegan who raises bees. He doesn't clip wings or use smoke. From what I gather he basically just maintains their boxes, feeds them sugar when it's too cold for em, and collects honey when it's time. Someone is about to come along and say "he's not a vegan. Sounds like a vegetarian" and then I'm going to think "sounds like you're gatekeeping a lifestyle like it's a religion, and not even all vegans who don't use honey agree on whether or not a vegan can use honey" but I won't, because I don't wanna get wrapped up in the nonsense.

    But either way, yes, some vegans do use honey. And some, like that theoretical commenter, don't eat anything that casts a shadow.

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  • [–] 26 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    don't eat anything that casts a shadow

    Anyone who doesn't exclusively survive on naturally dried up lichen ain't no real vegan in my book!

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  • [–] 12 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    Beekeeping family here: who the fuck clips bee wings?

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Iunno, never personally seen it. Just heard about it online when I first started looking into beekeeping (which I ultimately did not take up).

    Still interested in doing it (the keeping not the clipping), if you have any advice on getting started for someone with like 18 dollars between paydays. Lol

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    I'll say many cities have a club that rents out supplies or even has club hives you can use to get started. Also, I don't live in a huge city and I've seen used hives and frames for sale more than I thought I would, so it's worth keeping an eye out for those as well.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 years ago

    Personally I’m not sure the gate keeping you’re observing is all that much of an issue. I think it’s useful to remember many vegans are also public advocates for veganism. It’s important to them that people generally know what they mean when they advocate for veganism.

    However, the definition of all words are always in flux. It’s not uncommon to see people call themselves vegan when a more apt description of their lifestyle would be plant based, flexitarian, vegetarian, etc. As such, I think edge cases like your friend take on an outsized importance that goes beyond the morality of your friend eating honey.

    Basically, the goal may not be the social exclusion of your friend which is what I think is usually the problematic aspect of gatekeeping.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago

    also - does this distinction matter? Is someone who runs 100m dash vs an ultra marathon runner both runners? When I run for the bus I'm also running. Sonic the Hedgehog also runs. They have distinctions in context that make sense - but they are all running.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    not even all vegans who don't use honey agree on whether or not a vegan can use honey

    Exactly this, veganism is ethical choice, and ethics is not science. You can't 'prove' that something is acceptable, nor vice versa. There are guidelines and discussions but that's pretty much it.

    So this is really not about whether bees are animals or not.

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  • [–] 52 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    I'm not sure I'd be comfortable with my landlord harvesting my vomit as rent.

    "I'm eating it, I promise it's not a sex thing."

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  • [–] 32 points 2 years ago

    If my bank accepted vomit as mortgage payments, they could smack my ass and call me bulimic, I don't care what y'all do with my vomit, let's talk about pool house options and a second car.

    I'd be cool with creaming their coffee twice a week if it meant I got my house for no money.

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  • [–] 26 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    Couple of reasons. One, honey is made not from local pollinators but from European honey bees. Two, European honey bees are really good at producing honey, which means they're more efficient at removing pollen and nectar from flowers, denying food for native pollinators. Three, while only a few bees are directly harmed during honey harvesting, the need for their honey to be harvested means that they've been bred to make big, uniform honeycombs and a glut of excess honey. This makes them more susceptible to diseases, even before you factor in the monoculture nature of their existence.

    Essentially, it's not that eating honey is harmful to bees. It's that the creation of honey at scale is cruel both to the bees producing the honey and the native pollinators who get pushed out by them. We (my household) do have honey on occasion, but only from local, small scale honey producers.

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  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Here in Brazil we have Meliponiculture, farming honey from native stingless bees.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    Wow, that's interesting! Does the honey differ from the honey bee one?

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago

    Depends on the species, but in general the honeys have variation in the nutrients, some considered even more medicinal than that of European Honey Bees.
    They usually also have more water content, so unlike "regular" honey, they can more easily spoil.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Do you think there are no vegans in Europe?

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago

    Probably yeah. But also the European honeybee is not the only European bee nor pollinator so the argument holds true to some extent.

    However I'm not convinced the impact is worse than the monocultures which makes up the majority of our calorie intake. Thousands of hectares of nothing but beets or corn probably does more for killing insect diversity than a handful of beehives, but what do I know.

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  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    So my wife went vegan for a bit and the logic is basically any living thing we take advantage of or make their lives more of a labor. So eggs, honey, milk aren't vegan because companies put those animals in situations they normally wouldn't be in in the wild to take advantage and harvest products from them.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago

    Yeah, some vegans draw the line at the animal kingdom. (Plants, algae, mushrooms - these are all living things as well, but one has to eat something.) Some vegans I know do eat honey though. It depends on what feels like animal exploitation to the person.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Eh, I doubt most people care about being vegan for the sake of being vegan, but as has been said, honey bees are bad for pollinators, so from a moral viewpoint, you get to the same conclusion.

    Ultimately, though, honey isn't hard to give up. Certainly nothing that I felt was worth contemplating whether it's grey area or not.
    At best, it's annoying, because the weirdest products will have honey added. One time, I accidentally bought pickles with honey, and they were fucking disgusting.

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago* (3 children)

    honey bees are bad for pollinators

    Hm? What do you mean?

    From this paper:

    A. mellifera appears to be the most important, single species of pollinator across the natural systems studied, owing to its wide distribution, generalist foraging behaviour and competence as a pollinator.

    This is a genuine question btw.

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  • [–] 25 points 2 years ago

    I read an article on this a while back that made me refrain from actually getting bees. I can’t find it right now, but the gist is that domesticated honeybees will compete with a lot of other pollinators (mainly solitary bees) over the exact same food sources.

    However, the honeybees have a gigantic advantage in being supervised, housed and generally looked after by the apiary. Which will also employ methods to stimulate hive-growth, driving the hives demand for food.

    That is something a solitary bee - or another pollinator depending on the same nutrition - cannot compete with, driving them away.

    So, in a nutshell: adding bees to a place already rich in honeybees? Whatever. Adding honeybees into a local ecosystem not having them rn? That will drastically lower biodiversity

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago

    I'm no biologist, but as for why they're bad for other pollinators, yeah, what @frosch@sh.itjust.works said sums it up quite well.

    I'd like to add that, to my understanding, they're actually relatively ineffective pollinators, too. They might do the highest quantity in total, but I'm guessing primarily because of how many honeybees there are.
    I believe, the paper you linked also observes this, at least they mention in the abstract:

    With respect to single-visit pollination effectiveness, A. mellifera did not differ from the average non-A. mellifera floral visitor, though it was generally less effective than the most effective non-A. mellifera visitor.

    ...but I don't understand the data. 🫠

    As for why this is the case, for one, honeybees are extremely effective at collecting pollen, with their little leg pockets, which reduces the amount of pollen a flower has to offer.

    But particularly when they're introduced into foreign ecosystems, pollinators that are specialized for local plants get displaced.
    This may mean just a reduction of pollination effectiveness, or it could mean that the honeybees turn into "pollen thieves", i.e. they collect pollen without pollinating the plant.
    Here's a paper, which unfortunately no one may read, but the abstract describes such a case quite well: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20583711/

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago

    As long as we canot ask them, if it's ok if we take their honey (consent), it's not vegan. For an counter example, it's fairly easy to get consent from a dog to touch them. Most people are able to tell if they are fine or not.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (7 children)

    One of my best friends is vegan. They won't use anything that comes from animals. Nothing. That includes wool, even though the sheep is harmed in the process. They're absolutely opposed to any animal products or bi-products.

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