Is honey vegan?
We know that vegans don’t eat anything that’s been made from animals, animal products or created unethically.
Honey has been a bit of a grey area. And that’s because of the bees.
In the same way that some people on a plant-based diet don’t eat avocado, some also don’t eat honey, because both are harvested using bees.
The insects create honey for themselves, not for humans.
Commercial beehives have been set up to replicate bees’ natural habitat in order to be able to take honey on a mass level.
When humans give the bees a sugar substance to replace the honey taken, it lacks essential nutrients they need and can affect their lifespan.
This means many vegans believe honey is unethical to consume.
How do bees make honey?
Bees extract nectar – a sugary liquid from flowers – using their tube-shaved tongue and store it in their extra stomach, or ‘crop’.
While the nectar sloshes around in there, it mixes with enzymes that transform its chemical composition.
When a honeybee returns to the hive, it passes the nectar to another bee by regurgitating the liquid into the other bee’s mouth. This regurgitation process is repeated until the partially digested nectar is finally deposited into a honeycomb.
Of course, that’s not the same consistency as the stuff you put on your pancakes and the like.
Bees work extra hard to fan the honeycomb with their wings in an effort to speed up the process of evaporation.
When most of the water has evaporated from the honeycomb, the bee seals the comb with a secretion of liquid from its abdomen, which eventually hardens into beeswax.
That’s a lot of work and these hardworking bees haven’t consented to have their labour capitalised by humans. Unfortunately bees can’t talk in human language or sign contracts, so we can’t know if they’d be up for giving us honey in exchange for goods.
What do bees eat?
The long shelf-life of honey makes it so desirable for bees as they can consume the stuff for winter months when it’s harder to make.
But when worker bees are utilised for honey production, their natural diet is swapped for sugar water.
According to the Natural Beekeeping Trust, this isn’t the same as their natural source of sustenance, honey.
On its website it says: ‘Beekeepers take as much honey as they possibly can and substitute sugar water as winter feed.
‘Sugar water is seen as equivalent to honey. Yet it is anything but.
‘Honey contains many dozens of micro-nutrients that are not present in sugar water. It also has a higher acidity.
‘Photomicrographs of the stomachs of bees fed on sugar water look very different from bees fed on honey. Whereas the latter are plump and shiny, the former are small and shrivelled.’
Why do vegans not eat honey?
Some vegans don’t eat honey for the reasons mentioned above and the fact that certain beekeeping ways are killing the population.
Bees make significant contributions to the environment and vegans feel they should not be coerced into catering to human palettes, especially if this involves poor treatment.
Queen bees may have their wings clipped to prevent them from flying away.
Selective honeybee breeding is negatively impacting other nectar-gathering creatures which can destroy the environment.
The artificial insemination process for queen bees (who lead the worker beers) sees them being made forcibly pregnant which many vegans don’t agree is right.
Thankfully, we live in 2019 and those who are keen to add that dollop of honey to their porridge and such can use vegan alternatives.
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