Oh geez. This is getting amusing. As an attempt to marginalize all vegans that think honey is a matter of personal choice any comments made about honey that aren't inline with the Vegan Society dogma is going to be moved into this thread.

Nuts. I'm not going to post in the vegan forum anymore and may just stop posting here all together.

VeggieBoards subscribes to the definition and philosophy of veganism set forth by The Vegan Society:

As one of the non-vegan mods, I thought I should weigh in on this matter. Generally, any topics that attempt to change or redefine tenets of the philosophy of veganism or its meaning are not suitable for the vegan support forum. The vegan support forum is designed to help individuals who are currently trying to follow the aforementioned lifestyle set forth by The Vegan Society.

While individuals can choose whichever diet suits them best, that doesn't mean the redefinition of veganism (including its restrictions or allowances) is encouraged in the vegan support forums.

If any member wishes to discuss the necessity or validity of excluding honey from the philosophy or definition of veganism, they are welcome to do so in an appropriate thread in the Compost Heap.

As always, please feel free to present any valid points of view for consideration to the moderators while at the same time abiding by the guidelines that have been set forth.

Thank you for your attention.

Aristede

Oh you do think it's a crappy thing to do, hmmm? Then why "call out" vegans for eschewing honey while still eating plants pollinated by them? I believe you actually called us "dry drunks." That is name calling as well as calling out vegans for not being vegan enough.

In addition, I think the more polite term is "sober alcoholics."

You apparently care deeply about the definition of veganism since you often post about this or that thing being OK to eat because maybe it's not sentient, or does less harm than man-made, etc. I've been vegan for years and don't care whether oysters have brains, the sheep love us for exploiting them for wool and lanolin, and the bees dance happily when we take their honey. I'm not going to use obvious animal exploitation products.

Btw, the British Vegan Society coined the term vegan during WWII. Whoever it was that insulted them earler, shame on you.

So just so I understand things correctly, so its only the people that follow the Vegan Societies version of veganism that should be posting in the vegan forum? Or, at the very least, any vegan that doesn't follow the vegan societies position cannot mention any viewpoints set forth by other vegan groups?

It was explained in your own thread, Why are all threads on Honey being merged into a super thread? our policy on the Vegan Support forums. Perhaps you didn't read your thread, or should re-read it?

Naturally I read the thread I created, but that was about which threads were going to get merged into the honey super thread (this thread) and doesn't address the question I just asked. To ask again, if veggieboards is equating "vegan" with the positions of the vegan society what are vegans that are influenced by other vegan groups suppose to do with respect to the vegan forum? Are they not suppose to post? Are they allowed to post but can't mention views that differ from the vegan society?

From your own thread:

If you have difficulty following or comprehending these policies, perhaps you should post elsewhere.

I'm 100% OK with honey-abstaining vegans self-identifying as vegan. I'm a honey abstaining vegan.

That was judgemental and I apologize.

but according to veggieboards policy apis-vegetarian outreach, apis-vegetarian.org, and apis-vegetarian-action are *not-vegan*.

So then, as I understand, vegans that have been influenced by groups other than the Vegan Society must respect the position of the Vegan Society by not discussing alternate views in the vegan forums?

While this forum can define "vegan" however it wishes, what I'm having trouble understanding is how there is some monolithic definition of "vegan" when different vegan groups have slightly different positions and understandings of matters. And why is someone disallowed from even mentioning the fact that there are vegan groups that don't 100% agree with the Vegan Society?

And there is no need to be rude here, I'm simply asking questions.

Regardless if honey is vegan or not. Less sugar is probably better

I'm a vegetarian but I cut out honey as well and I guess if you avoid it enough your gut cannot tolerate because at a potluck I tried a veggie salad that had an asian sauce with honey in it (unknown to me) and I could not stop throwing up until I felt the honey coming back up my throat. Did any one else have this reaction? When I googled reaction/ intolerance to honey I only get allergic reactions like swelling and bumps.

Maybe it wasn't the honey, maybe it was another ingredient in the sauce?

Nope, happened with pumpkin butter and nuts that had honey too, I guess I built up an intolerance, it is the worst feeling in the world and it's hidden in more things than you'd think so I have to be really careful at restaurants to avoid certain dressings, nuts even desserts.

It's maddening how much stuff has honey added to it. There are so many breads, sauces, cereals, granola bars, even teas, etc that would be vegan if not for the honey. There is a local progressive bakery in my town that used to make a lot of vegan breads and cookies. But they decided to start adding honey to almost all of them. Sighs.

One thing I don't get is those who argue that humans using honey is actually ensuring the survival of the honeybee. The sheer and vast amount of honey used in commercial food makes me wonder though just HOW MUCH honey humans think they "need" to use to ensure their survival.

The mass production of honey (and why it's a cheap enough ingredient to be found in so many prepared foods) is driven by the commercial bee industry that is necessary to pollinate many foods (including foods eaten in quantity by vegans).

If more people kept bees on a small scale, there would be less need for what I would call the "factory farming" of bees - those large operations where bees are transported from place to place, to pollinate crops in their various seasons.

It's that kind of beekeeping which causes so many bee deaths, both immediately and as a result of the long term stresses to animals who are very location oriented. (Conscientious beekeepers know that great care must be given if a hive is to be moved even a couple of feet.)

Honey, as it is found in so many prepared foods and in the grocery stores, is simply a byproduct of the primary industry, which is the pollination of crops such as almonds, etc.

That's why it's rather disingenuous to decry the consumption of honey while still eating the foods which are the primary reason bees are abused on a large scale.

So honey is actually a byproduct of the need to pollinate crops?

Most of the honey in grocery stores, and I would say almost all, if not all, the honey found in prepared foods is.

If you price locally produced honey that is sold by beekeepers who don't "follow the crops" and get paid to have their bees pollinate crops, you'll find that it's pretty expensive (at least here in the U.S.) That's because beekeeping and honey harvesting is labor intensive, and not easy work. If honey were sold only by beekeepers whose income is derived solely from the honey, it would be far to expensive to be used as a sweetener in prepared foods.

Without the need for massive numbers of bees to pollinate large swathes of single crops, the amount of honey produced and sold would be greatly diminished. It would be a "specialty" sweetener, and priced accordingly, much like agave syrup and maple syrup.

The problem stems back to the ever burgeoning human population and its demands for "affordable" food. That drives agriculture into ever more intensive farming procedures, and that has an impact not only on bees but on many other species.

The most efficient way to grow and harvest pretty much any crop is on a large scale. That means for a given area, you have a mono crop situation - sometimes miles upon miles of the same crop. The native pollinators aren't sufficient in number to pollinate all the plants of that one specific crop; they can't be, because the need for pollination falls within a pretty small window of time (in the case of almonds, when the almond trees are blossoming). The native pollinators, who require pollen to meet their food needs, don't have sufficient food available during the rest of the year to sustain their numbers on the scale that's needed to pollinate the acres of almond trees during that small window of time when pollination is needed.

That's what's given rise to these large scale beekeepers who move dozens of hives from one area to the next, following the pollination cycles of various crops.

Another effect of large scale agriculture is that the bees are weakened, not only the stress of being moved from place to place, but also because their food sources are limited, and therefore their diets are limited, instead of being varied. This is a problem for wild bees as well (as well as for other insects and other animals who depend on vegetation in one form or another).

I believe it is a contributor to colony collapse disorder, which is affecting wild bee populations no less than "domestic" bees. Of course, general environmental degradation through the use of pesticides, herbicides, other pollutants is also a contributing factor, and it also appears that cell phone and other wireless use are also contributing factors.

To clarify a misconception someone mentioned earlier: Bees don't look around their hives and say "Look! We have plenty of honey! We can put our feet up and relax!" Those bees whose role it is to bring food to the hive will do that, day after day, and the bees whose role it is to build cells to store the honey will continue to build the cells as honey is produced.

A conscientious beekeeper will feed the bees in the spring and the fall not because insufficient honey has been left in the hive to feed the bees, but because the bees whose role it is to bring food to the hive will exhaust themselves flying far and wide to gather food when the food is scarce but the weather is warm enough for the bees to be active.

To address another misconception I noticed earlier in the thread:

Smoke isn't used to deprive the bees of oxygen. If that amount of smoke were to be used, the bees would (and do) swarm away from the hive, and you've lost them. (As well as having been stung by a very upset swarm of bees).

A small (very small) amount of smoke does calm the bees, but the effect seems to be olfactory, and too much smoke agitates them highly. That's why experienced beekeepers will smoke themselves and their clothing, and put a little smoke in the vicinity of the hive, but not directly into the hive. Bees will be much less likely to sting you if you are clean (no body odor, no perfumes or scented soaps, etc.)

Bees get agitated when it's windy, when the weather is changing, around people who are afraid or who smell, etc.

I would never claim that honey is vegan. All sorts of people pointing to the why's of that already.

That said, I think local small bee keepers are awesome. Vegetarians and Vegans alike NEED bees to help pollinate our food. My father in law keeps bees. He LOVES them, and I am grateful for people like him preserving the species instead of eradicating it, and if in that he uses some of their honey for his own use I am not going to bash him for it