The thing about honey

'But why don't you eat honey?'

As a vegan, this has been one of the questions that has stumped me for the longest time. Why don't I eat honey? I love honey - it tastes delicious, it's healthier as a sweetener than refined sugar, I love the fact that I can get locally produced Suffolk honey from the village shop in Ixworth and support the livelihood of a small scale company while reducing my consumption carbon footprint.

Recently I read this article which I found quite useful in addressing both sides of the debate.

Why honey is not traditionally seen as part of a vegan diet:

1) Honey is taken from bees, who have to work incredibly hard to produce a small amount of honey. Taking it away from them after their effort is seen as a form of exploitation and theft.

Honey is not just a by-product for bees - bees use it to feed a majority of honey bee larvae. Bees can over produce honey, and some responsible bee keepers will leave enough honey for the bees (how they judge that is something I am still unclear about), however, many irresponsible bee-keepers instead replace the honey with a sugar-water solution, which is nowhere as nutritious for the bees.

2) The act of farming bees violates their right to live in freedom, and bees can be killed during the process of extracting honey as a result of the often used method of smoking the bees out of their hives. One response to this has been the Flow Hive, which promises a safe, efficient method of extracting honey without having to have the bees vacate their hive, but the flow hive comes with its own set of problems and concerns.

Commercially, the queen bee is also often killed to prevent swarming (when many of the colony's honeybees follow their queen to begin a new colony), drones are killed as they are deemed unnecessary to honey production, and more bees are killed in the process of moving commercial hives around the country to pollinate crops and produce honey.

3) Bees are not oblivious to this ill-treatment. Because insects are so different from us, it is easy to forget that they too are sentient creatures who experience suffering.

4) That insects are killed during agricultural processes, a common argument against the abstinence from honey ('You're killing insects there, so why do you avoid honey just because it kills insects?') is an invalid argument, given that veganism seeks to reduce suffering, in particular intentional exploitation and killing. To perpetrate suffering just because you can't eliminate it entirely does not make sense.

But - some considerations:

1) Colony Collapse Disorder - resulting in the mass death of bees - means that the population of wild colonies has declined. Bees - both honeybees and other types of bees - are responsible for pollination, which is needed for the growth of agriculture and the provision of food. Bees would usually pollinate the flowers near their hive, and since flowers bloom at different times in a year, a wild bee would be able to sustainably pollinate throughout the year. It is through the process of pollination that honey is made too, since pollination and nectar-collection go together, and that nectar is then turned into honey.

However, with the declining population of wild bees, it has become more important that honeybees carry on the process of pollination because, quite simply, no pollination means no food.

Because of current methods of agriculture, where large fields (especially huge for a little bee!) of mono-crops only have one flowering at a certain time, left to their own devices, bees would starve. Once that crop finishes its flowering, the bees would have no recourse to a source of nectar. The commercial movement of bees to reach other plants and crops ensures that bees do not starve. By eating honey, you in some way support the movement of bees to crops they can pollinate and collect nectar from, thereby supporting the bees and the growth of plant-based foods.

2) In view of Colony Collapse Disorder, the fact that bees are kept and can be monitored by bee keepers is crucial in sustaining their population.  This is of course predicated on the need for ethical beekeepers, and despite commercial, profit-driven beekeepers that neglect the health and welfare of their bees, ethical beekeepers who also sustain businesses and make profit do exist.

Beekeepers are trained to notice changes in the health of their bees and can save whole colonies if the presence of bacteria or disease threatens the colony. Ethical beekeepers protect their bees from the very parasites and pesticides that contribute to Colony Collapse Disorder.

3) Vegan alternatives to honey can be just as or more ethically and environmentally dubious. The harvesting of agave nectar is threatening the endangered Mexican long-nosed bat and the Jaguarundi through the forced destruction of their habitats - approximately 113,126 acres destroyed from 1991 to 2000.

Final Words

1) If you do buy honey, try to buy local and organic. Local because smaller scale producers are more likely to be able to care properly for their hives, and not use factory-farming methods which treat bees like disposable commodities. Organic because pesticides are the very things that are contributing to bee deaths, especially with regard to Colony Collapse Disorder.

2) Ultimately, what is crucial to remember is this - just because you don't feel resolved over the issue of honey, doesn't mean you cannot take steps towards a compassionate, vegan lifestyle. If honey is the thing you 'just can't not have', then continue eating it, but take steps in cutting out meat, dairy, eggs and other animal products in your diet and lifestyle. Try to find other substitutes for honey, like date paste or maple syrup, and remember that honey is the precious, amazing creation of some very small but very complex creatures.