- Jan
- 15
But What About Honey? Is It Cruelty-Free?
Posted by Steve Martindale at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Many people who understand the cruelty involved in factory farming and are morally opposed to eating meat find it less obvious that the lowly honeybee should also be of ethical concern. Just who are these honeybees, anyway? And what’s the big deal about sharing a bit of their honey in a symbiotic relationship that gives them free access to billions of flowers, full of the nectar they so like to collect?
Beekeeping is big business, to be sure: 15 to 30 percent of all food crops depend on bees for pollination. Like all factory farming, beekeeping has morphed into an industrial process which puts profits ahead of animal concerns. Commercial beekeepers truck some 2.4 million hives all over the country to track seasonal crops. These journeys clobber the bees with physiological stress, pesticides, diseases, and related disorders. Even small outfits and hobbyists subject their bees to cruelty, such as cutting off the queen’s wings so that she can’t swarm. Honeybees are thought to have originated in the tropics; winter mortality in temperate zones remains a serious issue. And recently, colonies across the world have been decimated by colony collapse disorder (CCD), a result of the abuses that we have wrought against these fascinating creatures. The range of pesticides, fungicides, and invasive procedures it takes to make bee hives profitable is staggering, and it is not yet clear what combination of these offenses is exterminating so many bees.
But so what: A bee is just an insect, a miniature biological robot, is it not? Who cares, as long as the crops are pollinated and there’s honey on the table? And how else could we pollinate all those plants, anyway–by hand, with a tiny paintbrush? Actually, there are 20,000 to 30,000 other native bee species who are quite up to the task, without factory farming them. To let nature take her course, however, we must stop destroying the diversity of ecological systems.
These marvelous creatures are famous for their sophisticated cognitive feats. Many other insects are similarly talented, of course, but they haven’t been as well studied. We know that honeybees process massive amounts of information about flowers, locations, and the behavior and physiological status of other bees in the hive, not to mention their ages, weather, and the seasons. As they mature, young worker bees progress through a series of nest-keeping chores before graduating to the task of foraging for nectar outside the hive. Consider for a moment the decisions that a foraging bee makes as he or she visits a number of different places and flowers on a trip from the nest. Where are the best flowers in relation to the hive, which individual flower to visit next, how to harvest the nectar from that particular flower, how long to stay in that patch, where to search next, how much nectar to load up with before returning to the hive, and oh, yeah, what direction is the hive from that location and how far is it?
When they do find good flowers, bees advertise them to everyone else in the hive with their famous waggle dance. In route, they use landmarks to guide their flights; they can recall their surroundings and remember visual images. For years, researchers have thought that honeybees must have some sort of “cognitive map”–a mental representation of local geography–to navigate by, because their bearings and routes to and from the nest are so nuanced and accurate. Recent work has brought the notion of cognitive maps up for reconsideration, but the bottom line remains: The mental life of bees includes decision-making that would indicate conscious awareness if performed by vertebrate animals. This is not hard-wired robotic behavior. Honeybees change their minds when conditions change. When looking for a new nest location, for example, scouts report back to the hive and spread the word to their sisters. The scouts will then visit the sites recommended by others, and if they are convinced that the suggested location is better than their previous choice, they change their vote and spread the word to the rest of the hive about the better site. Let that sink in for a moment. Do honeybees think? I leave that question open for comments.
Do bees suffer as a result of agricultural manipulation? Of course they do. And whether or not honeybees are consciously aware of the insults that we inflict upon them, they are so very alive and engaging that I could not bring it upon myself to kill one just because I can, or just for some honey. Nor would I want to invade their nest, cut off their wings, relocate them, and subject them to toxic pesticides, environmental stress, diseases, infections, and all the rest that beekeeping bestows upon them. Live and let others live. Be free and allow others to be free.
That’s why I don’t eat honey, but please pass me the maple syrup and agave nectar!
Posted to Health | Posted to Tags: bees, honey, vegan, vegetarian
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Laura says...
January 15th, 2009, 3:38 pm
Hi Steve,
Finally, all the info about why I don’t eat honey in one place! I am going to print this and bookmark it so that next time I get grief about not eating honey, I will have the facts. Thanks for the great blog!
Honeybees are awesome little creatures. We are lucky to have a natural hive in our yard, which is full of fruit trees and flowers. They pollinate our trees, giving us an abundance of avocados and citrus. When our flowers are in bloom, they look like they are dancing, they are so happily rolling around in the centers. We have very happy bees, and I think it’s because we leave them alone to do their thing, the way nature intended.
Bobbie says...
January 16th, 2009, 5:57 pm
There is great information here about the commercial honey industry. What about conditions for local and/or organic honey? For example, there are people who sell local honey at our farmer’s market. I agree the honey is still being produced for the benefit of the hive and not human consumption, but I am curious about the honey process procedures for small scale distributors.
Gary says...
January 18th, 2009, 5:52 pm
Thank You for this article/editorial, as it contains some good information.
Not eating honey at all is certainly a choice, however it is not necessarily the best choice for everyone. There are many “Homestead Beekeepers” (referred to as hobbists by commercial beekeepers), and nationwide in the USA, they care for the majority of domisticated bees.
Homestead Beekeepers do not truck their hives and they interfere with the bees only to provide medicene to protect them from mites. Their bees work in Summer and rest in Winter, and these beekeepers struggle to keep up a grand tradition. If one bothers to search, their honey is seasonally available, and it is an act of kindness to the environment to purchase their products. Commercial beekeepers sell honey as a byproduct, and really don’t need the money from honey to sustain their operation, as they are very well paid by the large agriculture companies that pay for their services. Almonds, for instance, are 100% dependent on bees for polination, and California has 730,000 acres of almond farms. If ine wants to stop eating anything to reduce commercial bee use, stop eating almonds. Basically, Think before just acting.
One third of the Human diet is derived from pollinated plants, and honeybees are responsible for 80% of that pollination. If one wants to take any action to help the plight of threatened honeybees, take a look at GM foods. Europe is not experiencing the severity of hive decline, which the US is, and the only difference is that they have severe restrictions on GM food cultivation.
Thank You for reading.
Gary
Tampa
A.B. says...
February 24th, 2009, 1:11 am
I agree that in the United States very much of how we rely on animals is a load of crap. But I’ve been to parts of the world where food, of any kind, is a blessing. Even though we have choices on what to buy in our grocery store, not everyone in the world have the same choices we do. You’d be surprised at the things that I’ve seen in this world. Areas with thousands of people with no clean water and nothing to eat. Go try telling them not to eat a chicken. The mass slaughter and captivity of animals is cruel for sure, and I agree with that. But to put a chicken side by side with a human being and saying that there is no difference in the value of their life is bull crap. That’s like saying you would rather shoot a person than a chicken, WOW, that’s nuts to me.
Roxane says...
July 10th, 2009, 11:16 am
I live in a small town where, fortunately, food isn’t considered as money but as a trade. It is quite common to go help pick strawberries and get a home-made meal instead of money.
I buy my honey in bulk (since it’s the only food that isn’t perishable) from a this family who only owns a few hives and treats them gently. They don’t even use smoke! I think it’s a nice alternative and a good thing to encourage locals, I wouldn’t buy the honey in a bear bottle. Pumpkin honey is very much worth it!