The Buzz About Honey
Is honey vegan? The short answer is no. To understand why, let’s examine what honey is and how it is made.
Honey is a gold- or amber-colored liquid used by humans mainly as a sweetener, though it can also be found in some cosmetics, medications, and alcoholic beverages. Bees make this viscous substance from nectar collected from flowers. For them, it is a source of nourishment.
It all begins with plants. Plants and insects have a collaborative relationship, and perhaps the most important element of that collaboration is how insects help certain plants reproduce. They do this through pollination, with many plants attracting winged insects to their flowers using sweet nectar, which contains sugars, vitamins, and additional nutrients that serve as a high-energy food source for insects such as bees. Along with nectar, flowers of these plants also contain pollen, grain-like particles that are another source of food for bees and are responsible for fertilizing a plant through that plant’s ovary. (While nectar is vital for energy, pollen provides bees with protein, which is essential for the development of young bees.)
It all begins with plants. Plants and insects have a collaborative relationship, and perhaps the most important element of that collaboration is how insects help certain plants reproduce. They do this through pollination, with many plants attracting winged insects to their flowers using sweet nectar, which contains sugars, vitamins, and additional nutrients that serve as a high-energy food source for insects such as bees. Along with nectar, flowers of these plants also contain pollen, grain-like particles that are another source of food for bees and are responsible for fertilizing a plant through that plant’s ovary. (While nectar is vital for energy, pollen provides bees with protein, which is essential for the development of young bees.)
Honeybee colonies are a perfectly balanced collective, and every bee has a specific job. There is the queen bee, who is the dominant, adult bee and mother to the bees in the hive. There are the worker bees, who are all non-fertile females; they are the bees collecting nectar and pollen. Finally, there are the drones—male bees whose only job is to mate with the queen. Unlike the worker bees, they don’t have stingers and thus cannot help defend the hive.
While the bee is busy within the flower collecting nectar, her body traps bits of pollen from one part of the plant and transfers some of it to the ovary of another plant, thus facilitating its reproductive cycle. In addition to attracting insects with nectar, plants gradually evolved bright colors, and some developed scents and odors: flowers pollinated by bees and flies have a sweet scent, while flowers pollinated by beetles have musty or spicy odors.
A bee will suck the nectar and store it in her stomach. If she’s hungry, she will consume the nectar she needs and then transport the rest back to the beehive, where other bees convert the nectar into honey by passing it, mouth-to-mouth, from one to another until the moisture content of the nectar has been reduced from about 70 percent to 20 percent. When ready, the honey is stored in cells within the hive (the honeycomb) and capped with beeswax in preparation for the birth of baby bees and for the winter months. The worker bees use the honey and pollen to make “bee bread,” which is the colony’s main source of food and is even fed to baby bees.[1]
This is the way nature intended bees to live and thrive, but industrialized honey production is a different story. In the United States alone, honey is a nearly $10-billion industry, so the companies that package and sell it have an enormous economic interest to protect.[2]
Not-So-Sweet Reality
The honey industry shares several parallels with the dairy industry. For one thing, the honeybee (Apis mellifera) is not native to North America; just like cows, honeybees were brought to the U.S. centuries ago from Europe to serve as agricultural animals.[3] In addition, both the dairy industry and the commercial honey industry are built upon models in which humans ultimately steal the animals’ food source and replace it with an inferior and unnatural substitute. Like cows, honeybees are artificially inseminated. And, just as cows and calves are considered “expendable” in the dairy industry, so too are bees sometimes killed after they have outlived their usefulness: bee farms have been known to destroy entire colonies after harvesting because it’s cheaper than feeding the bees throughout the winter.[4]
Let’s look closer at some of the troubling realities of the honey industry.
Bees are given artificial feeds. As we’ve established, honey and pollen are foods for bees. Since most beekeepers want to profit from the honey, they feed the bees a substitute, usually sugar syrup or high-fructose corn syrup.[5] These artificial foods have been found to harm the immune system of bees and cause genetic changes, ultimately diminishing their natural defenses against pesticides.[6, 7] Indeed, the practice of feeding bees high-fructose corn syrup has even been tied to the collapse of bee colonies around the world, since the substitute does not contain the enzyme they need to help to fight off toxins.[8] So, not only is honey the food nature intended for bees, but it contains vital protective properties meant to help bees survive.
Bees are artificially inseminated. In nature, queen bees select whom they mate with, usually 10 to 20 drones, and copulate in flight. In the honeybee industry, semen is collected from mature drones who have been caught and stored in cages. After being selected, the drone’s head is crushed, his abdomen is squeezed, and his semen is collected in a syringe.[9, 10] The queen is then immobilized in a chamber and knocked out with carbon dioxide gas and the semen from about 10 drones is forced into her.[11, 12] This procedure is meant to ensure honey farms are using the best “breeding stock.” One company that specializes in providing queens even boasts: “We can make inseminated breeder queens to order, per your specifications.”[13]
Bees are intentionally killed. In addition to dying from weakened immune systems and drones being killed in the process of artificial insemination, bees used for honey may be killed in other ways. Hives are prone to disease, for example, and many beekeepers will simply “depopulate” an entire colony of bees by burning them alive in their hives.[14] (Beekeeping literature actually recommends fire for the “euthanasia” of bees.)[15] Meanwhile, honeybee farmers not wishing to go to the expense of maintaining hives throughout the winter often gas the colony with calcium cyanide.[16]
Bees are accidentally killed. In the course of removing honeycomb and beehive components such as frames, beekeepers have been known to kill worker bees, unborn bees (known as bee brood), and even the queen.[17, 18] For beekeepers, it’s just one of the consequences of doing business. “I kill brood all the time for my IPM ,” boasts one beekeeper. “I cut the tops off half of my drone brood during the spring and summer and yank their corpses right out.”[19]
Queen bees often have their wings clipped. As a queen bee ages, a new queen is born in the colony to replace her. At this point, the older queen will fly away to start a new colony—taking the bees with her. To prevent such “swarming,” beekeepers routinely clip one or both wings of the queen, thus preventing her from ever leaving.[20] But many beekeepers argue that clipping the queen’s wings does not prevent the other bees from swarming.
A Sticky Position
So, why do some people who consider themselves vegan continue to eat honey? It could be because they don’t think of a bee as an animal. Or that they aren’t aware of where honey comes from. Some believe honey is simply a natural byproduct of crop pollination. Still others feel that avoiding honey is something only “extreme” vegans do.
These vegans may be surprised to learn that honey is sometimes even tested on other animals, including the use of rats to determine how honey affected their testosterone levels, the use of dogs who have been burned in a lab to see if honey helped heal their wounds, or using rabbits who underwent skin lacerations to evaluate the healing properties of three types of honey, along with many others. [21, 22, 23]
Bee Smart
Although intelligence should never be a criterion for not harming or exploiting someone, it may help you understand bees better to know that they are not simply “mindless” drones and workers, forever making honey. Indeed, the whole point of their honey-making is that they are planning ahead, preparing for the winter months when nectar and pollen will not be available. Bees also have a basic grasp of the concept of zero—an understanding that reflects such high brain functioning that it was once thought only humans were capable of it.[24] Bees experience emotions, as well—and store these experiences as memories.[25] Scientists have even documented them using tools: honeybees in Vietnam were seen using animal feces to repel giant hornets.[26] Moreover, bees have been observed learning tasks from their fellow bees and even improving upon what they’ve learned. “These are high, high, highly intelligent creatures,” says one biologist. “They use their neurons in their brain as efficiently as any other animal on the globe.”[27]
And let’s not overlook how important bees are to our planet. Do you like flowers? You can thank bees for pollinating plants. Do you like eating fruits, nuts, and vegetables, including almonds, asparagus, avocados, broccoli, cherries, citrus fruit, cranberries, cucumbers, melons, and soybeans? Yep, bees again; in fact, about one-third of the food we eat comes from crops pollinated by honeybees.[28] Animals in the wild benefit from the pollination efforts of bees, too. Bees are even partly responsible for the proliferation of the Earth’s trees that produce the oxygen we breathe and absorb CO2! So show them some love!
One final note to consider: A worker bee will live about one month and produce just a twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in her entire lifetime,[29] which means that a single teaspoon of honey added to a cup of tea is actually the life’s work of 12 bees. Why steal their hard-earned sustenance when we have so many other options?
And let’s not overlook how important bees are to our planet. Do you like flowers? You can thank bees for pollinating plants. Do you like eating fruits, nuts, and vegetables, including almonds, asparagus, avocados, broccoli, cherries, citrus fruit, cranberries, cucumbers, melons, and soybeans? Yep, bees again; in fact, about one-third of the food we eat comes from crops pollinated by honeybees.[28] Animals in the wild benefit from the pollination efforts of bees, too. Bees are even partly responsible for the proliferation of the Earth’s trees that produce the oxygen we breathe and absorb CO2! So show them some love!
One final note to consider: A worker bee will live about one month and produce just a twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in her entire lifetime,[29] which means that a single teaspoon of honey added to a cup of tea is actually the life’s work of 12 bees. Why steal their hard-earned sustenance when we have so many other options?
What You Can Do
- Bee Kind! Use honey alternatives like maple syrup, agave, or date syrup—or try making your own with our classic vegan honey recipe and vegan hot honey recipe. There are also many delicious, ready-made vegan honeys available in stores!
- Plant a bee-friendly garden: If your home has enough outdoor space, create a bee-friendly garden to help these essential workers (as well as the drones and queens) thrive!