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[-] baggachipz@sh.itjust.works 3 points 4 months ago

Would you eat honey from a natural hive without these practices?

[-] TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Good question. I wouldn't (we're assuming casual foraging for fun and not a survival situation); it's still not vegan, but it'd be arguably less unethical on a spectrum.

A con compared to the apiary is that these wild bees aren't being artificially supplemented by e.g. sugar water; it's live-or-die for them, and that's their food. It's not in me to take that away from them when I don't have to.

If someone took like a teaspoon of honey (still the lifetime output of about a dozen bees) while giving the bees something greater in return, then I don't think most vegans would think it's inherently wrong*, but like any ethical framework, whenever you try to find contrived boundaries, it's kind of like "okay, but why?" It's sometimes engaging on the armchair but rarely in practice.

A huge pro compared to the apiary is avoiding, in addition to the physical mistreatment of the bees themselves, the perpetuation of the exploitation. If you one-and-done plunder a hive, that's not vegan, but you're not giving money to someone as a way of telling them "thanks, and keep doing this".

* I'm making a hand-wavey assumption here that you can just do that without pissing off and killing a bunch of bees or smoking them out just so we can have perfectly ideal ethical conditions.

this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2026
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