Why is honey not vegan? Vegans are against exploitation. Vegans and honey. Can vegans eat honey? Vegans eat honey main table

One of the concepts of vegans is not to exploit other living beings for your own table. However, some vegans argue that veganism as a diet and philosophy of life only minimizes the degree of exploitation. Here is what people write about veganism and exploitation:

Oh, someone here proved to me just now that exploiting insects is normal for a vegan. Why are vegans so hypocritical? I think I will do without reading the note, what is the difference between a vegan and a non-vegan.

But what if the bees don't care about exploitation? Do they not feel pain and grief? So vegans can eat honey? By the way, I have not read anywhere about the dangers of honey.

I just feel uncomfortable when I understand that in order to feed my womb, I have to exploit someone. Veganism against exploitation!

Cucumbers, for example, are eaten by vegans and vegetarians. The difference between them is that a vegetarian eats honey with a clear conscience, while a vegan thinks he is exploiting bees. Don't you, vegans and vegetarians, think that you are exploiting those villagers who plant and harvest cucumbers for you? And that fruits and vegetables are ethical food.

It is clearer now, there is something to think about. Perhaps honey should be abandoned in the same way as I refused crustaceans (which are just as primitive) - just to become even a little "cleaner" and kinder. But how to refuse to exploit the villagers - I do not know. Life is pain.

And the farmers who pick cucumbers for you? Don't you exploit them, like the same bees? Me too, ethical food!

Insects you exploit. They don't hurt either. But don't people who pick the same cucumbers for you under the scorching sun hurt after hard work in the sun? Or is it not exploitation? We all exploit someone, whether we are at least three times vegan or super-ethical people. Any kind of veganism is the exploitation of agricultural workers in the name of your table. Life is pain, as already mentioned here.

Blindly follow some kind of bespontovyh codes - for downs. It is obvious. These things need to be known. But you apparently cannot help others with this. Exploitation of the villagers - what are you talking about? This is their job!

If for farmers to collect vegetables and fruits is work, for bees to collect honey is also work. And for a fee, the beekeeper will make evidence for them. So honey and veganism are quite compatible. Brad, I think it's in your head.

Eat fruits and vegetables. Although, when collecting fruits and vegetables, the peasants are exploited. But, the peasants are not bees, they will suffer.

Vegans, do you refuse all the benefits of civilization? For you, people sew clothes, make household items and household chemicals. By the way, people collect fruit - vegetables for you! You are self-deceiving.

Do you think veganism can reduce the exploitative burden on other living beings by giving up animal products, or is it a utopia?

Prepared specifically for the site Beauty.ru.

The use of products such as honey, royal jelly, propolis, wax, as well as any kind of animal husbandry, involves causing suffering and death to animals.

Despite the fact that at first glance this type of animal husbandry seems to be the closest to the way of life of bees in their natural habitat, even the most careful beekeepers in the process of working with a hive to extract honey cannot do without harming and killing a huge number of bees. It should also be added that many commercial beekeeping operations often resort to artificial insemination of the queen bee, a procedure that requires the use of a male bee (drone); while the most common method of obtaining sperm is to decapitate the drone (when the head is torn off, the central nervous system receives an electrical impulse that causes sexual arousal; sometimes the head and chest of male bees are strongly squeezed to provoke the release of the penis.

Queen bees are often killed - every two years they are replaced with more productive ones. Most often, honey in hives is replaced with sugar syrup, which is not an adequate equivalent to the natural nutrition of bees, this leads to various diseases and a reduction in the life of the bees. For this reason, antibiotics (tetracycline, terramycin) are often added to sugar. Honey or "vomit" (the nectar that the bee swallows, with enzymes and its own digestive secretions, causes it to be rejected, and therefore the whole mixture is burped) does not contain substances corresponding to proper human nutrition.

The need for honey and other products obtained from bees for health is completely unjustified. Moreover, the consumption of honey by children under the age of one year is fraught with the risk of developing infantile botulism.

Translation from Italian: Svetlana Shcherbina, VITA Animal Rights Center / VITA News

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Honey and Vegetarianism

Many ethical vegetarians, especially vegans, exclude honey from their diets as a product of animal exploitation. At the same time, the question of the ethics of drinking honey among vegans is highly controversial. However, there is no doubt that bee products are vegetarian and are quite appropriate for less restrictive types of diets, such as lacto-vegetarianism and ovo-lacto-vegetarianism.

Arguments that can be made in favor of the use of honey by vegetarians:

• Honey is a completely ecological product and is produced naturally without any harm to the environment, unlike fruits and vegetables, which can be grown by producers using various types of chemical treatments (for example, herbicides and pesticides, as well as insecticides). The bee apiary itself does not harm the environment - on the contrary, because it contributes to the pollination of plants and, accordingly, ensures their vital activity.

• The natural process of honey production is ethically justified - beekeepers provide bees with a comfortable habitat and wintering, and only excess honey is taken for the consumer, since this product is produced by bees with a large supply. The element of "coercion" that vegans rely on when they refuse milk is missing - the bees are programmed to produce honey in large volumes by nature itself. In the process of handling bee hives and honeycombs by experienced and competent beekeepers, the bees do not suffer and, moreover, do not die.

Of course, cases of unscrupulous beekeepers creating unbearable conditions for keeping bees are not ruled out - the use of antibiotics and sulfur dioxide, sugar to increase productivity. In order to eliminate this circumstance, you can find a private beekeeper and buy honey from him, being confident in the ethics of the product.

• An indisputable argument in favor of the use of honey is its nutritional value. Honey contains a lot of vitamins and minerals, especially necessary for a vegetarian, in particular B vitamins, calcium, iron, zinc and phosphorus. Thus, for vegetarians, honey is a powerful source of trace elements, which, among other things, are in it in a form that is easily digestible for humans.

Each person is free to choose which foods to eat and which ones to exclude from their diet. At the same time, the question of the ethical use of honey (as well as the quality of the product) follows mainly from the method of its production - the integrity of the producer.

Choose a quality product and be healthy!

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Vegetarianism and honey

FACT 1. To collect only 1 kg of honey for a person, a bee must overcome a path equal to the length of the equator, fly around up to 4 million flowers and bring up to 150 thousand burdens to the hive!

FACT 2. Man does NOT need honey to live. And the bees, on the contrary, need it in order to restore their strength and continue their hard work.

FACT 3. After the publication of this article, a flurry of indignation fell upon the authors of the beekeepers, who believed that this article humiliates and insults their profession or hobby. However, this article confirms that human consumption of honey contributes to the death of millions of bees. The task of vegans is to draw attention to the protection of the rights of all living beings, including bees. And then, after reading this article, everyone will be able to decide whether to eat honey or not.

So, 8 reasons why vegans shouldn't eat honey.

1. Bees are subject to profit and exploitation.

Like other animal products, honey is used by humans for profit. To achieve maximum profit, bees are exploited in the same way as chickens, pigs or cows. In beekeeping, bees are often victims of unnatural living conditions, genetic manipulation and stress during transport. The wings of queen bees are always clipped so that they cannot fly away, and because of this they are "attached" to their habitat. Thus, beekeepers force the rest of the bees to live in terrible conditions by placing a queen there, because without it the bees will not fly anywhere. The hives consist of boxes with several "floors", and are made in such a way that it is easy to open them from one side and take the honey. They have been specially designed to be easily transported and harvested from the bees.

2. In the process of collecting honey, bees are often injured and killed. Many beekeepers are very careless when collecting honey. Thus, the wings of tiny creatures are often damaged or their legs are torn off. In addition, beekeepers deliberately take away part of the offspring, since a large offspring contributes to a decrease in honey production, and, accordingly, a decrease in profits.

3. Queen bees live only part of their natural lives.

In intensive animal husbandry, cattle, pigs, and chickens live only part of their natural lives, and bees do not live their full lives either. Queen bees that have laid eggs can live up to six years, but beekeepers kill them within a year, replacing them with newer, more productive ones.

Bees produce honey not for fun and not at all for humans, as some beekeepers claim. Honey serves the bees more as a food product. Honey, made from pollen and nectar, contains nutrients that bees need to survive, especially during the winter months. Beekeepers replace it with cheap sugar, which makes animals vulnerable to diseases and increases their mortality significantly.

5. Bees work hard every day to produce honey.

The hive consists of tens of thousands of bees, each of which has a specific task. Some bees are responsible for collecting pollen, others act as guides. Worker bees fly about 40 million flowers a day. And this hard work continues day after day.

6. Bee deaths affect us all

7. An easy way to collect more honey

Did you also think that beekeepers “smoke out” bees because it calms them down and causes less harm? You were wrong. In fact, beekeepers do this out of selfish motives. The smoke suggests wildfire for the bees, and their natural reaction is to take in as much honey as possible. The beekeepers take advantage of this and collect more honey than they could without the smoke. Plus, the smoke slows down the reaction of the bees a little and they do not have time to bite people who steal their honey.

Perhaps there are beekeepers who do not take all the honey and try not to cripple the bees. But it's still wrong to take something away from someone for your own benefit. Bees need honey for a healthy lifestyle, but humans do not. Well, if you really want honey so much and do not believe that it is difficult to make, then why not try making it yourself?

What can you do?

By purchasing honey or products containing honey, you support the slave labor of bees. Therefore, we advise using vegan honey substitutes in the future, such as agave syrup, dandelion syrup or spruce honey. You will be real heroes if you build bee houses in your garden where the bees can live safely and where they can spend the winter.

Sourced from www.veganblog.de

> Queen bees that have laid eggs can live up to six years, but beekeepers kill them within a year, replacing them with new and more productive ones

And for something, but beekeeping definitely does not contribute to the disappearance of bees from the face of the earth. You don’t think that people walk through the forests, collect wild bees there, and then put them in their terrible “prisons”, where they starve, poison them with smoke, and then barbarously kill them? It just sounds funny.

Why do some vegans eat honey and others don't? Why I eat it, my position on this issue!

Hi guys. Today I want to talk to you about a controversial issue. About bee products.

Some people eat them, others don't. Consider the arguments of those who refused these products. You will know what I think on this issue. And why do I use different bee products.

The essence of the vegan movement is not so much the rejection of meat, but the reluctance to hurt animals.

For this reason, vegans do not visit zoos and dolphinariums, because in their structure they are very similar to livestock farms, where animals are kept in terrible conditions in an uncharacteristic habitat for them.

Controversial vegan products.

Refusal of dairy products is also not due to the fact that milking is not a natural phenomenon, but due to the fact that dairy cows are kept in very harsh conditions and must be slaughtered as soon as they become less “effective”.

As for homemade milk, the maintenance of cows by private farmers is not much different from large factories.

There are a number of controversial foods: onions, garlic, mushrooms and honey. From this list, only honey is honored with discussions and constant discussions, which, ultimately, lead to nothing.

Is it possible to eat - the decision is purely individual, and depends on personal views.

"Industrial" and "home".

Honey is a natural product of bees, so to understand why some vegans do not eat honey, you need to understand the process itself and pay attention to some of the nuances of the production of the product.

How honey is formed.

This substance is formed from the belching of bees, which spit up excess digested plant sap along with part of their internal organs, but this does not lead to the death of the insect.

In winter, when the hive has no opportunity to extract new nectar, they use up the honey reserves that they collect during the summer. However, during the entire cold period, they consume only a small fraction of all reserves.

As soon as the hive overflows, the bees leave the hive in search of a new one. They don't go back to the old one.

Based on this information, we can draw an important conclusion:

that the production does not cause pain or suffering to insects, and its collection is also part of the natural cycle.

Tricks of beekeepers.

However, there are several nuances that “turn” the situation in a completely different direction. To obtain honey in large quantities for sale, beekeepers resort to some tricks:

• Collection of all produced nectar. People take all the honey from the hive, and in order for the bees to survive the cold winter, sugar is poured into the hive.

However, in its structure and properties, it is not as useful. Due to the fact that insects do not receive the necessary nutrients, they begin to get sick, their life span is reduced.

The queen bee, which produces offspring, beekeepers change every 2-3 years. This allows you to maintain the "efficiency" and the number of bees.

• Another type of intervention is artificial insemination,

For the sake of which it is necessary to kill the drone, because at the time of death or severe pain, various receptors begin to work, including those responsible for arousal. When the pain reaches its peak, the drone ejaculates.

This treatment of bees is no different from animal farms that produce milk. Therefore, many vegans refuse to do pollen, bee bread and all that.

Others leave a loophole for themselves in the form of private beekeepers who have proven themselves to be good hosts and hive owners who only take half of what the bees produce, thus supporting every little system in every single house.

properties of honey.

Some vegans shy away from bee products not because of potential insect cruelty, but because of the lack of beneficial properties.

This is a rather strange position, which is supported by only a few facts;

1. That honey is processed by the body longer than fruits and vegetables.
2. Lingering in the intestines, it can begin the process of putrefaction and the release of toxins into the bloodstream, which adherents of a plant-based diet are so eager to avoid.

However, this position is held by a small part of vegans, because honey is a natural preservative that allows you to keep food for as long as possible.

In addition, depending on the flowers from which the bees collected nectar, other properties of this product may differ.

Different types of honey.

There are many types of honey. And forest and meadow, and clover, and chestnut. It all depends on which plants the bees collected nectar from.

• Linden is a good prevention of colds, it has a diaphoretic effect, improves metabolism, reduces the risk of heart disease and has a whole list of recommendations and indications for use.
• But buckwheat contains a lot of iron, which is often not enough for vegans on a strict diet, especially for women.

My position is or is not.

I proceed from the position that honey is obtained from pollen of plants, therefore it is created by nature, from plants. Like the water we drink, like the air we breathe.

Pollen, nectar are part of plants, but animals are already more developed creatures.

That is why I enjoy eating honey, bee products. As well as pine nuts, berries and amaranth seeds.

Natural honey and other bee products can be purchased here.

In any case, the decision whether there is honey, each vegan makes on his own, based on his own beliefs, principles and gastronomic preferences. How do you feel about honey?

That's all. I have made my position clear to you. I wish you health and eat natural products. And in future articles I will talk about other useful bee products.

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"Anti" means "against" and "bio" means "life". Next, you will see evidence from American as well as Canadian scientists that honey kills bacteria. That is why, like poisonous plants such as onions and garlic, it is used as a folk remedy for all kinds of diseases.

Doctors, by the way, always use the Latin names of all concepts on purpose so that the brain cannot understand “can you shove it inside yourself or not.” After all, most of you will refuse to eat a substance called “POISON”, but if you call it “antibiotic” in Latin, then the human brain is no longer able to see the danger for itself and fails, and as a result, the person thinks that it is useful. Never trust doctors (i.e. killers in white coats)!

When writing, the article "Why Vegans Don't Eat Honey" was used.

Do vegans eat honey?

QUESTION: Please tell me, is it true that vegans do not consume honey? I have a friend who eats honey, but considers himself an avid vegan. Thank you very much for your answer.

ANSWER: There are different ways of eating. Vegetarianism is different. This and:

• lacto-ovo vegetarians - those who forego fish and meat, but eat dairy products and eggs in addition to plant foods
• lacto-vegetarians - eats only dairy products from animal foods
• vegans - refuse completely animal food
• raw foodists - eat only raw non-animal food
• etc.

The question of whether or not to use honey for vegans is debatable. There are vegans who eat it, and there are those who don't. In this case, we believe, it all depends on what was the motivator for the transition to a vegan way of eating. Often this is a non-violent way of life - a vegan refuses animal products in order not to exploit animals (including refusing milk, for example, due to the fact that the conditions for keeping animals on farms are simply disgusting). There are also a number of scientific factors that prove that animal products like cheese, milk, and so on harm the body - they decompose much faster than plant products, and poison our body while moving through the rather long human intestine.

Honey is a product of a completely different class for two reasons:

1. Honey does not spoil, it does not poison the body. By itself, honey, on the contrary, has preservative properties - that is, it keeps food unspoiled.
2. Bees give honey, it is laid down by nature and without it they will not be able to live. They give it in much larger volumes than their bodies require. In order to prove this, you can see how bees live in nature - they find a nest, for example, a hollow in a tree and begin to build their own dwelling there - pull off wax frames, which are then filled with honey and sealed. After some time (depending on the size of the bee colony and the size of the dwelling itself), they fill their house with honey so much that they have nowhere to put new honey, and their nature is such that honey must be collected and stored. And if there is nowhere to put it, then you have to leave the dwelling, and look for and equip a new dwelling. And the old dwelling filled with honey is found by animals, they eat this honey, freeing the house for new bee colonies. Such is the natural cycle. What a man did - he took a bee family and settled it in an artificial house, which he takes care of and from which he pumps out excess honey. A good beekeeper never takes all the honey from the bees - he leaves it to them as much as they need for life. There is, of course, a variant of "beekeeping" in quotation marks - where the bees are locked in evidence, they are fed sugar, and they produce honey from it - in which there is almost nothing useful. Of course, in this case, the bees are not very well, and honey is not at all useful and it really should not be consumed.

The conclusion from this is that each person (vegan or not) decides for himself what foods to eat, and what foods to choose for quality. We use honey - but we buy it from acquaintances from the village with full confidence that these beekeepers provide the right care for the bees, and this honey is rich in all kinds of minerals and vitamins that the bees have collected from the flowers.

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Comments and reviews (11)

margarita

great article! thank you! I am a vegan, but I eat honey and this is the only animal product that I eat, I love donica honey and only it! Your article is very useful for me!

Maria

But no matter how good the beekeeper is, in order to get honey, he smokes bees anyway, so this is definitely exploitation. What kind of stupid double standards?

Irina

Maria, and besides this, the beekeeper takes care of the bees, builds a house for them, looks after them, finds the best honey-bearing places for them. Perhaps I look at the situation from my own bell tower - because I personally eat honey and consider it a very useful product, and my father is a beekeeper. The smoke does not harm the bees. The only thing I ask you to be more tolerant of the opinions and positions of other people is that it is not necessary to immediately talk about stupidity or other qualities. to each his own.

Sofia

Good article, especially important, here are the reasons why people go vegan.

Honey and products made from milk are, of course, a stumbling block, in the ideal case there is no violence, no exploitation. But it rarely happens ideally, and the more people there are, the stronger the demand for products rises, the more severe and less costly the conditions for obtaining them become.

Valentine

I live in the country, so I wonder if I buy milk from a friend who takes good care of the cow. Is this considered wrong?

P.s. It's important for me!

Irina

Valentine, it's up to you to decide if it's right or wrong. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but that's just my opinion. Cows give more milk than they need. Therefore, they began to milk them.

And the question is not even always in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bcorrect / incorrect. There is a lot of information on the topic that milk and dairy products are not particularly useful for the human body, even in the freshest and purest form. This is a separate topic for discussion.

Milk is really useless. In general, a person should not use it as such. But honey is different. If it does not harm health, but on the contrary, it helps him, why not use it. A delicious substitute for unhealthy sugar.

Glory

For me, the article is one-sided.

Igor

Thanks for the common sense.

Ekaterina

According to traditional Indian medicine - Ayurveda, milk is a useful nutritious product not only for the physical body of a person, but also for mental activity, the formation of the psyche and the balance of mental disorders. Along with honey, milk has pronounced beneficial properties.

However, it is worth knowing why there is another opinion - that milk is not healthy: the fact is that milk has certain rules for drinking, namely

1) time of use: it is worth using only in the dark (evening, night) and also early in the morning (before 9 am) - at this time, milk is well digested. Especially in the evening, a glass of warm milk with spices (cardamom, turmeric, fennel, cinnamon, and honey) serves as an excellent antidepressant and helps to fall asleep quickly and cope with insomnia.

2) the temperature of consumption - it is best to warm the milk and not drink it cold.

3) quantity - you can determine the correct amount of milk for yourself like this - drink the desired volume at night and see if there is a white coating on the tongue in the morning. If you overdo it with milk, then there will be a dense white coating on the tongue and in this case it is better to reduce the amount of milk

4) the rule applies only to pure milk. Sour-milk products are not recommended to eat at night and it is best to have them only for breakfast early in the morning.

According to the ethical attitude for vegans and vegetarians, it is better to buy milk, as well as honey, only from people who take good care of animals and do not abuse or exploit them.

Otherwise, a glass of milk from farms where cows are sent to slaughterhouses immediately after they run out of milk is not a favorable product.

Why is honey not vegan?

The article highlights such issues as intelligence and pain in bees, production technology, the issue of honey confiscation, the question of the usefulness of honey and alternatives to honey and other waste products of bees.

However, we don't need to look back to 1944 to see the non-vegan nature of honey. Any definition of veganism involves the exploitation of animals, and bees are animals without a doubt. Honey bees are arthropods, just like lobsters and crabs. That is, if you refuse to respect the bees, as well as crustaceans, it turns out that you can ignore the interests of earthworms, dissected in biology lessons. Similarly, scallops, snails and oysters would lose their protection - they did not overtake bees on the evolutionary ladder. James and Carol Gold, professors of ecology and evolutionary biologists at Princeton and science writer respectively, point to the fact that "bees are at the very top of their evolutionary tree, just as humans are at the top of theirs." When we look at bees, we see one of the two most elegant responses to life's challenges on our planet. Even more interesting, perhaps, is that in addition to the many differences, there are an infinite number of supernatural parallels that converge at the same points of evolutionary solutions to similar problems. Of course, all the talk about who is higher and who is lower is nothing more than fiction. Even Darwin pointed out that when talking about biological species, "one should never use the phrases 'more developed' or 'less developed'." But still.

Two groups of field bees from the same hive were accustomed to two food sources, with one on the shore, the other in the middle of the lake. When the quality of food improved in both places, both groups of bees circled the hive to tell the rest of the bees where to get good food. The bees, which were addressed by those of their relatives that fed on the shore, flew to feed there. In turn, the bees, listening to their relatives who ate in the middle of the lake, seemed to reason: “Flowers in the middle of the lake? Yes, these guys seem to be crazy! ”, And only a few flew to feast on the water. Would it really occur to someone to conclude that these bees were simply too lazy to eat on a lake smelling of fragrant flowers? Exactly. Thoughtful researchers decided to conduct the experiment again and moved the lake feeder to the shore, but to the opposite (surrounded by large volumes of water). This time, the bees considered that the source of food was located in a completely acceptable place and followed their relatives soaring in a dance in a crowd. But that's not so important, is it? Another question is much more fundamental, and here it would be useful to recall once again the words of the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who said about animals: “It doesn’t matter if they can think. Or speak. What matters is whether they can suffer.”

In this experiment, bees were subjected to electric shocks to provoke a stinging reaction. As a result, it turned out that a higher voltage was required to elicit a stinging response in IPA-exposed bees (and thus activated their natural pain-killing system) than to elicit a similar response in non-IPA-treated bees. The response was also directly dependent on the dose of IPA. Further, if bees exposed to IPA were also exposed to naloxone, which blocks the opioid system, the effect of IPA was completely neutralized - the bees continued to sting even at low voltage.

During autumn and winter, there is a damper at the entrance to the hive. Usually the bees pull their dead relatives out of the hive, but the damper prevents them from doing so. Beekeepers remove dead bees from the hive only a couple of times in the winter, as they are warned that "it is beneficial to remove the accumulated bodies of bees" (Bonnie, 116).

Bees are often fattened in autumn, spring and early summer. All the sugar they eat turns into honey, so even if a beekeeper claims that his bees ate honey in the winter, he will mean honey, which was once sugary water in an airtight bag.

But new technologies are already on the horizon that will allow you to get even more honey. So if a beekeeper takes it upon himself to fill you in on his mission of upholding an ancient tradition, remember that the practice he upholds is only a hundred years old and very different from the methods of collecting honey that existed thousands of years before. And it has nothing to do with other, non-Western, methods of beekeeping, which are distinguished by modesty and respect for the way of life of other creatures.

Bee pollen is collected by bees in "pockets" on their paws. Pollen also contains some amount of nectar and saliva. Bee pollen is so popular because people themselves cannot collect such a variety of pollen.

Royal Jelly is a nutritious food for feeding queen bees.

Beeswax is produced by bees to build beehives.

Propolis is a hard resin collected by bees drop by drop from plant buds and mixed with enzymes. Used as a beehive cover as an antiseptic and glue.

Bee brood. Actually, these are bees that have not had time to fully develop - that is, this is not even a vegetarian "product".

Do you think no one even notices if you eat honey or not? I assure you, these guys are watching you closely. The Bulletin of the National Honey Bureau always ends with a section listing new products containing honey. They have gone so far as to monitor the sales of products with honey in comparison to the sales of similar products without it.

My note: the favorite brand of many vegans (and non-vegans too) is Hurraw!

If you really want that kind of honey, go into the woods and stick your hands up to your elbows in the beehive. Most likely, you will not find a free-living colony at all, because all such bees have already been killed (honey bees are not only useful for ecosystems in many ways, but also harm them: firstly, they crowd out the bees that originally inhabit this or that territory, and , secondly, they steal nectar and pollen from other pollinators - much more valuable to the environment than the bees themselves). But if you do find at least one free hive, ruining it will destroy the bee house, and you will get charming stings. Of course, this will only happen if you don't come from a culture that has a strong (thousand-year-old) tradition of respectful honey-gathering, like, say, the Malay rainforests, where honey-gatherers climb 30-meter trees.

“Honey consists mainly of fructose, glucose and water. It also contains other sugars, as well as enzymes, minerals, vitamins and amino acids. (National Honey Bureau)

In fact, any sane nutritionist will tell you that there is literally no difference between honey and other sweeteners. Moreover, there is even a group of people who are under no circumstances advised to consume honey. These are children under the age of 12. Their digestive system is simply not ready to deal with bacterial spores that can be found in honey and develop baby botulism in the body.

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P chelas (Apis mellifera) are insects with a highly developed nervous system, hence they feel pain in the same way as other animals. The use of products such as honey, royal jelly, propolis, wax, as well as any kind of animal husbandry, involves causing suffering and death to animals.

Despite the fact that at first glance this type of animal husbandry seems to be the closest to the way of life of bees in their natural habitat, even the most careful beekeepers in the process of working with a hive to extract honey cannot do without harming and killing a huge number of bees. It should also be added that many commercial beekeeping operations often resort to artificial insemination of the queen bee, a procedure that requires the use of a male bee (drone); while the most common method of obtaining sperm is to decapitate the drone (when the head is torn off, the central nervous system receives an electrical impulse that causes sexual arousal; sometimes the head and chest of male bees are strongly squeezed to provoke the release of the penis.

Queen bees are often killed - every two years they are replaced with more productive ones. Most often, honey in hives is replaced with sugar syrup, which is not an adequate equivalent to the natural nutrition of bees, this leads to various diseases and a reduction in the life of the bees. For this reason, antibiotics (tetracycline, terramycin) are often added to sugar. Honey or "vomit" (the nectar that the bee swallows, with enzymes and its own digestive secretions, causes rejection in it, and therefore the whole mixture is burped out) does not contain substances corresponding to proper human nutrition.

The need for honey and other products obtained from bees for health is completely unjustified. Moreover, the consumption of honey by children under the age of one year is fraught with the risk of developing infantile botulism.

Information:

P human breeding is one of the branches of animal husbandry based on the exploitation of bees for the sake of obtaining "economically useful" products for humans - honey, wax, perga, pollen. For those who do not understand that without exception, all areas of animal husbandry are based on a utilitarian attitude towards animals (fish, insects, etc.), and stories about "good" grandfather's honey are as illusory as grandmother's sour cream from "happy" cows , I recommend paying attention in beekeeping pavilions to a product called "podmor" - liter jars with hundreds of dead bees.

And here is a description of the technology for obtaining "podmor":

"The collected dead dead can be divided into three types: medicinal, spring and autumn. MEDICAL - these are bees that gave up poison during apitoxicotherapy. SPRING dead dead is obtained as a result of cleaning the hives. AUTUMN dead dead are working bees who, for some reason, did not live up to start of winter." "Podmor is obtained by smoking weak and culled families, for example, with sulfur, or starving them. They close all the entrances of the hive, remove the frames with foundation, after shaking the bees into the hive, and wait for the bees to die of starvation, about 10 days." This is how a man "thanked" the bees for their hard labor for the benefit of people. After all, to get 1 teaspoon of honey, a bee needs to bring 4 kg 200 g of nectar, that is, to make 70,000 burdens! 1 pound of honey is obtained by pollinating about 2 million flowers, for which the bee needs to fly about 55 thousand miles. In its entire life, one bee produces 1/12 teaspoon of honey.

Irina Novozhilova, Center for the Protection of Animal Rights "VITA"
Permanent link http://www.htm

The bee swarm is initially removed from the wild and forcibly moved to artificial hives. To prevent the queen bee from taking the swarm back to nature, the wings of the queen are cut off.

Vegan honey or so-called. "artificial honey": apple and other fruit syrups, maple syrup, agave nectar, brown rice syrup, barley malt, sorghum syrup, cane sugar, beet sugar and others.

P chelas (Apis mellifera) are insects with a highly developed nervous system, hence they feel pain in the same way as other animals. The use of products such as honey, royal jelly, propolis, wax, as well as any kind of animal husbandry, involves causing suffering and death to animals.

Despite the fact that at first glance this type of animal husbandry seems to be the closest to the way of life of bees in their natural habitat, even the most careful beekeepers in the process of working with a hive to extract honey cannot do without harming and killing a huge number of bees.

It should also be added that many commercial beekeeping operations often resort to artificial insemination of the queen bee, a procedure that requires the use of a male bee (drone); while the most common method of obtaining sperm is to decapitate the drone (when the head is torn off, the central nervous system receives an electrical impulse that causes sexual arousal; sometimes the head and chest of male bees are strongly squeezed to provoke the release of the genital organ. Queen bees are often killed - they are replaced every two years to more productive ones.

Most often, honey in hives is replaced with sugar syrup, which is not an adequate equivalent of the natural nutrition of bees, this leads to various diseases and a reduction in the life of the bees. For this reason, antibiotics (tetracycline, terramycin) are often added to sugar. Honey or "vomit" (the nectar that the bee swallows, with enzymes and its own digestive secretions, causes rejection in it, and therefore the whole mixture is burped out) does not contain substances corresponding to proper human nutrition.

The need for honey and other products obtained from bees for health is completely unjustified. Moreover, the consumption of honey by children under the age of one year is fraught with the risk of developing infantile botulism.

FACT 1. In order to collect only 1 kg of honey for a person, a bee must overcome a path equal to the length of the equator, fly around up to 4 million flowers and bring up to 150 thousand burdens to the hive!

FACT 2. Man does NOT need honey to live. And the bees, on the contrary, need it in order to restore their strength and continue their hard work.

FACT 3. After the publication of this article, a flurry of indignation from beekeepers fell upon the authors, who believed that this article humiliates and insults their profession or hobby. However, this article confirms that human consumption of honey contributes to the death of millions of bees. The task of vegans is to draw attention to the protection of the rights of all living beings, including bees. And then, after reading this article, everyone will be able to decide whether to eat honey or not.

So, 8 reasons why vegans shouldn't eat honey.

1. Bees are subject to profit and exploitation.
Like other animal products, honey is used by humans for profit. To achieve maximum profit, bees are exploited in the same way as chickens, pigs or cows. In beekeeping, bees are often victims of unnatural living conditions, genetic manipulation and stress during transport. The wings of queen bees are always clipped so that they cannot fly away, and because of this they are "attached" to their habitat. Thus, beekeepers force the rest of the bees to live in terrible conditions by placing a queen there, because without it the bees will not fly anywhere. The hives consist of boxes with several "floors", and are made in such a way that it is easy to open them from one side and take the honey. They have been specially designed to be easily transported and harvested from the bees.

2. In the process of collecting honey, bees are often injured and killed. Many beekeepers are very careless when collecting honey. Thus, the wings of tiny creatures are often damaged or their legs are torn off. In addition, beekeepers deliberately take away part of the offspring, since a large offspring contributes to a decrease in honey production, and, accordingly, a decrease in profits.

3. Queen bees live only part of their natural lives.
In intensive animal husbandry, cattle, pigs, and chickens live only part of their natural lives, and bees do not live their full lives either. Queen bees that have laid eggs can live up to six years, but beekeepers kill them within a year, replacing them with newer, more productive ones.

4. Bees need honey too.
Bees produce honey not for fun and not at all for humans, as some beekeepers claim. Honey serves the bees more as a food product. Honey, made from pollen and nectar, contains nutrients that bees need to survive, especially during the winter months. Beekeepers replace it with cheap sugar, which makes animals vulnerable to diseases and increases their mortality significantly.

5. Bees work hard every day to produce honey.
The hive consists of tens of thousands of bees, each of which has a specific task. Some bees are responsible for collecting pollen, others act as guides. Worker bees fly about 40 million flowers a day. And this hard work continues day after day.

7. An easy way to collect more honey
Did you also think that beekeepers “smoke out” bees because it calms them down and causes less harm? You were wrong. In fact, beekeepers do this out of selfish motives. The smoke suggests wildfire for the bees, and their natural reaction is to take in as much honey as possible. The beekeepers take advantage of this and collect more honey than they could without the smoke. Plus, the smoke slows down the reaction of the bees a little and they do not have time to bite people who steal their honey.

8. Bees need honey
Perhaps there are beekeepers who do not take all the honey and try not to cripple the bees. But it's still wrong to take something away from someone for your own benefit. Bees need honey for a healthy lifestyle, but humans do not. Well, if you really want honey so much and do not believe that it is difficult to make, then why not try making it yourself?

What can you do?
By purchasing honey or products containing honey, you support the slave labor of bees. Therefore, we advise using vegan honey substitutes in the future, such as agave syrup, dandelion syrup or spruce honey. You will be real heroes if you build bee houses in your garden where the bees can live safely and where they can spend the winter.

Sourced from www.veganblog.de