Miami Vegan Blog

Here is a clip from a NY Times Blog regarding why vegans don't eat honey:

Rynn Berry, the author of “The Vegan Guide to New York City,” answered City Room readers’ questions this week about his views on shopping, eating and living a vegan lifestyle in New York.

Can you address why some vegans do not eat honey? I understand the thoughts behind not eating eggs and dairy, but have not heard anything convincing about the ill-effects of honey production.

And just a quick comment for #67 - I had the opposite effect of switching to a primarily vegan diet. My cholesterol when from a high in the 220s to 167 after ceasing to eat animal products with cholesterol.

— Posted by Melissa

Vegans eschew honey because they regard it as an unethical food. In the first place, honey is the work product of the bee, intended to nourish their offspring. Beekeepers snatch honey from the hive and substitute sugar water, depriving the young of their proper nourishment. Stealing honey is not only unconscionable — it is a violation of the precepts of asteya (non-stealing) and ahimsa (non-violence) that are promulgated by the oldest religions on the planet, Buddhism and Jainism, that promote non-violence and non-violent eating.

Aesthetically, honey is an unlovely food. Honey is nectar exuded by flowers, swallowed by bees then regurgitated by them. Ethical vegans accurately refer to honey as “bee spit,” or “bee vomit.”

At the core of every beehive is the queen bee—the only bee capable of laying eggs. While worker bees live only for a few months, queens live as long as several years.

However, in commercial beekeeping, the same remorseless practices associated with factory farming are applied to bees. The queens are killed every six months, and replaced by virgin queens that are mass-produced by specialist breeders. These virgin queens are artificially inseminated by sperm collected from crushed males. The queen has her wings cut off –to prevent her from swarming, which is the natural reproductive activity of the colony.

To increase crop yields, beekeepers often transport colonies to areas where crops are in flower, so that bees may artificially pollinate them. The unintended consequence of this is that it drives out the native pollinators, such as birds, bats, moths, butterflies, and other winged creatures. This creates a monoculture of pollinators that is subject to disease and dearth. Hence the recent alarming decline in honeybee populations in the US.

[Source]