Honey is a much discussed food in vegan circles. Most vegans consider the production of it harmful to the bees and believe it to be stealing their food. Others say that honey is produced in an excess, in which case taking some for human consumption shouldn't matter. I myself have been confused by this debate and not really known where I stand. When I started thinking about it I realized I didn't even know the details of how bees make honey or that much of the environmental impact. So I've decided to try and sort some things out.
Let's start with the basics. It's kind of embarrassing but, as I already confessed, I wasn't sure of the difference between nectar and honey, when one became the other and how. Now I've gotten it sorted out. Flowers want to attract pollinators such as bees to help spread their pollen to other flowers. They therefore contain sweet nectar. The bees land on the flowers and use their long tongues to extract the nectar and store it in a second "honey stomach" they've conveniently been equipped with. One fascinating thing about bees is that they are flower monogamous, meaning that after landing on their first flower, they will only go back to that kind of flower. That's what makes them such exceptional pollinators!
Once the honey is collected, the bee flies back to the hive. There it regurgitates the nectar that is then passed on to other working bees and chewed and regurgitated for about thirty minutes. Passing through all of those bee tummies changes the nectar. Enzymes in the bees' stomaches change the chemical structure of the nectar, breaking down its complex sugars (sucrose) into simpler ones (fructose and glucose). This new substance is placed in the honeycomb compartments, but still contains too much water to be honey. Worker bees therefore fan the honey with their wings, making the water evaporate. The compartment is then closed off with a liquid secreted from the bee's abdomen. This is what later on becomes bee wax.
When learning the complexity of this I must say I was mightily impressed! It takes around 10 bees to produce one single teaspoon of honey! Pretty amazing. For the bees, the honey comb is like a pantry stocked for harder times. Come winter, the honey is eaten for energy. The bees huddle around the queen and the babies to keep them warm and they all eat honey (or something like that). Doesn't that sound cozy? Only thing is that the bees produce more honey than they need. Given more space during the warm months they will produce honey continuously. This is why many believe we can take honey from our winged friends.
Although the life of a honey bee might sound quite nice from the description above, times are getting harder for many bees. As with all other food production, more and more is becoming industrialized. For honey bees that often means that more honey is taken from the hives, not leaving enough left for the bees to feed on. Instead they are fed supplemental food which is often of lesser quality, such as refined sugar or cane syrup, leading to nutritional deficiencies. In order to increase the yield of honey, it is important to make sure that the bees don't swarm, which they naturally do when a new queen is full-grown. Swarming is therefore prevented by cutting the wings of new queens, killing them or killing the old queen.
Back in the day, when bees were kept on small multi-crop farms, there was always one flower or other available for pollinating, even as the season changed. But times are different now, and efficient farming with as large pay-offs is of the essence. Farming has become more large scale and relies more and more on monocultures, that is only farming one kind of plant on a large area. The problem is that such an environment cannot sustain pollinators, as all the crops bloom at one point in the season. Enter the bees. As bees can be kept hives, which for example wild bees and bumblebees can't, bees are often transported from one area to another to pollinate crops. Moving bees for pollination was done all the way back in ancient Egypt, but not the distances we talk about today. For example, the almond crop of California requires ¾ of all the managed bees in the US to pollinate it. Bees are therefore shipped from as far as Florida. Bees have become a tool for agriculture, more than a way to produce honey.
Apart from being transported to pollinate different areas, many bees spend part of the year producing honey in one place and are then shipped to another to be kept for winter. It has been shown that bees rely on recognizing their environment, and frequent moves can therefore stress the bees. This is one factor that has led to a grave decrease in bee populations the last couple of years. Another, maybe even more important, is the increased use of pesticides in agriculture. As the bees collect nectar they are exposed to these insecticides. The monocultures leave the bees malnourished as they only get one type of nectar and when the plants no longer flower the bees are fed artificial supplements. Bees used in industrial honey production are also suffering from lack of genetic diversity, which together with malnutrition and stress make them more susceptible to pests and diseases. The past couple of years a phenomenon called Colony Collapse Disorder has started occurring more and more. This means that the working bees for reasons not fully understood simply leave the hive. It has been shown though, that sick and dying bees leave the hive, a phenomenon called altruistic self-removal, which may be an explanation.
Bees pollinate 80% of all flowering plants. This converts to about 30% of all the crops we rely on for food. Loosing the bees would mean loosing major food sources and a hard blow to agriculture. Apart from almonds, bees also pollinate plants such as cucumbers, cantaloupes, avocados, plums and pears. It is therefore important that we take care of our bees. When researching this subject I found a funny commercial for a company called BeABee Inc., showing what could happen in a world without bees. Luckily the ad is not real, but it may very well become reality if things don't change for the bee population. If you click yourself to get to the website for the commercial it will redirect you to an actual organisation working to help bees. There you can for example sign a bee saving pledge.
So what should one do? Eat honey and therefore help to sustain bee communities? Or not eat honey because doing so is exploiting the bees? It is not easy, but here is my conclusion. Bees aren't having an easy time right now, but they are doing a very important job, that is pollinating our plants. Taking honey will in fact not harm the bees, if it is done in a good way by an experienced bee farmer, who will leave enough to honey feed the bees. One should stay away from industrially produced honey as this rarely provides good living standards for the bees. But by buying local honey, which is often not too hard or expensive, you can ensure that the bees are farmed in a good way and those bees will also benefit the area they're living in. If possible, try to talk to your local bee farmer about how the honey is produced and the different aspects of bee keeping that I've mentioned. Another way to help the bees would be to support small-scale, organic farming, but that is a subject that will have to be discussed another time.
Even though I know most vegans do not approve of eating honey, let's consider a few things. The main reason I believe in veganism is that it is better for the environment. So if we think about the environmental impact of refined sugar versus honey (now we're talking locally produced honey). Refined sugar comes from sugar beets or sugar canes. These plants are generally grown far away, that is if you don't live in say South America, and therefore have to be imported. This transportation of course requires energy. Growing the beets and sugar canes also require a large amount of farmland, something that has sadly become a scarcity leading to for example rain forests being cut down. In the farming itself, large amounts of water and insecticides (not good for the bees!) are used. Finally, the sugar has to be processed, which also requires energy. Honey production, on the other hand, does not require farmland, but benefits the crops around it. Honey can be bought locally and unprocessed. The carbon footprint from honey comes from supplemental feeding and transport, which can be avoided by buying local honey produced in a good way.
This post became a lot longer than I initially intended. And yet there is so much more I could write. What started as researching honey led me into the importance of bees and to aspects of our new way of industrial farming that were completely new to me. If you are interested, there is a lot out there to read and learn. At the end of the post are some links to other articles I found interesting and worth reading. I believe that honey should not have to be banned from a vegan diet. This is mostly because i believe it to be good for the environment and because I like buying local products. If you have any other thoughts on the matter, think I've left something out or want to share other aspects of eating honey and keeping bees, please leave me comment below!
Intersting articles:
Amazingly interesting, everyone should read this article: Save the Honey Bee, Sterilize the Earth
Other interesting articles: The Secret Lives of Honeybees: How Honey Gets Made
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