Non vegan here. 🤔
Soooooo honey is not extracted directly from the bees, so that would be an argument to declare honey vegan.
On the other hand, even with modern beekeeping tech and modular hives, one could argue the act of taking honey to be a serious intrusion on the bees' life, so that could be an argument that honey is not vegan.
One could argue where the line lies with eusocial organisms. Do you consider the individual bees or do you consider the whole hive? Whole hive? Honey may not be vegan. Individual insects? Honey could be vegan.
It really depends on your standards. One vegan friend of mine does drink mead (honey wine, for the uninformed) for instance.
I feel like instead of a giant push for veganism, there should just be a push to eat what's sustainable.
Beef and dairy? Causes huge amount of greenhouse gasses and with current methods of production, it is not sustainable
Blue fin tuna? These things have been way over fished and are endangered. Not sustainable, just try it once and move one with your life.
Tilapia ? These things grow like weeds and can be fed efficiently. Go ahead, good source of protein for your diet.
Honey? We need bees and they are an important pollinator for crops. Go nuts (just watch your sugar intake}
Almonds? Takes huge amounts of water to grow and exacerbates droughts in the areas they are farmed. Eat less of these.
Potatoes? Grow stupid easily in all sorts of conditions. Go nuts.
Stupid discussion. It does not matter whether something is in the box "vegan". Ask yourself why you would or would not eat something. If you don't want to eat(/drink) dairy because of the way the animals that produce the dairy are treated, would you be ok when they are treated differently? Are bees treated in the same way? Does it matter if you treat them in this way? Those should be your questions, not "does it belong in this box?".
fungi?
Reasons that I, as a vegan, do not use honey:
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I cannot guarantee that the bees consented to their product being harvested. Some beekeepers clip the queen's wings, which can prevent the colony from leaving.
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I cannot guarantee that bees were not harmed in the process of harvesting (potentially getting crushed by the honeycomb frames, for example) or in the process of controlling the colony (like clipping the queen's wings).
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Kinda tongue-in-cheek questions, but: Honey isn't an animal body part, it isn't produced by animal bodies, so if it is an animal product because bees process it, is wheat flour (for example) an animal product because humans process it? How about hand-kneaded bread? Does that make fruit an animal product because the bees pollinated the flowers while collecting the nectar?
Bees are gubbermint drones, and honey is simply concentrated 5G chemtrail juice that gives you super autism.
I appeal to the Director of Veganism!
excuse me I need to eat meat in front of vegans again.
Any that’s the hypocrisy of Vegans. Milk and honey are the only two animal-based food sources that don’t involve the killing of animals. And in the case of most cow breeds, milking is actually needed as they have been bred to produce far more milk than their calves drink. And with careful management of the hive, you can harvest a lot of honey from a mature hive without negatively affecting the hive itself - it just delays/defers new queen production and swarming, which is desirable anyhow - no beekeeper who has hives primarily for crop pollination wants to have hives swarming each and every year.
The whole "Vegans against Honey" thing is so stupid.. like... brah, Bees are the one critter that has already unionized.
Not like there's much sense to begin with in a diet where you need a thousand supplements in order to not go insane from a Vitamin B-12 Deficiency and start blaming Carnist Voodoo for your Anemia... Ya know instead of going "Oh wait, I was getting my iron from chicken...."
Edit: On that note, I actually do need to take Iron for a defiency, this post reminded me.... Not a vegan though.
