What is the deal with honey?

because bees are so important to plant production, commercial bee producers do not keep bees in a friendly little hive behind their house. they are shipped all over the country, just like cows, chickens, pigs, and other livestock, to pollinate commercial operations.

honeybees (which we abuse to make our honey) are not native to north america. as a result of this and over-production, they are forcing out native bee populations, which is wreaking havok on local ecologies.

commercial bee production intentionally kills off bee populations to keep them from splitting; they kill queens to prevent uncontrollable growth; they are treated with pestisides; they are treated with chemicals to subdue them while their food is stolen; they are forced into commercially-produced combs which are not right for their size which leads them to grow smaller and leads to parisite infestation; the sugar-water left behind for them does not contain enough nutrients to sustain them to their proper health. the list goes on.

this site isn't vegan, but it goes into some of the problems: http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_5194.cfm

wikipedia also talks about colony collapse disorder: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_Collapse_Disorder

even if bees were 'kept well' by beekeepers, their essential food is still not ours to use.

You're welcome, thanks for bringing it up so I could remind myself to avoid honey again :)

It's not as simple as just taking the honey and being on their way- read on....

Bees are often killed in the production of honey, in the worst case the whole hive may be destroyed if the keeper doesn't wish to protect them over the winter. Not all beekeepers do this, but the general practice is one that embodies the attitude that living things are mere *material* and have no intrinsic value of their own other than what commercial value we can wrench from them.

Artificial insemination involving death of the male is now also the norm for generation of new queen bees. The favoured method of obtaining bee sperm is by pulling off the insects head. Decapitation sends an electrical impulse to the nervous system which causes sexual arousal. The lower half of the headless bee is then squeezed to make it ejaculate. The resulting liquid is collected in a hypodermic syringe.

(from: http://www.ivu.org/faq/food.html)

I personally think mutilating a bee to death for his semen is pretty sick.

Bees don't make honey for humyns, it's that simple. Regardless of how kindly the bees are kept, creating honey has its purpose, and that purpose is definitely not sweetening humyn food. Also, Bees shouldn't be "kept" anyway, that's not natural.