Like with everything in life, we all hardly ever can completely agree on a solution, problem, or if something is even “worth” being considered as a conflict. This is not different for vegans or raw vegans either! We all have our right to an opinion, to see certain things as facts and dismiss what fact-like information does not resonate…may be it just sounds too wacky.

Some vegans wear leather from second-hand clothing shops, hand-me-downs from parents or possibly see it as being wasteful to throw away the item since they already owned it before going vegan.

Not all raw foodies are vegan, there are raw primal people out there who eat raw milk, eggs, meat and so on.

So it is not all that surprising that vegans, vegetarians and human beings in general do not all agree about bee products. Technically speaking, beeswax, honey, comb and bee pollen is an animal product. It wouldn’t have been produced if the bee did not create it.

Bees are in the phylum Arthropoda family, the same as lobsters and crabs.

This goes with how Vegetarianism (no animal meat but dairy, honey, eggs are all okay even gelatin is ok) and Pescetarianism (no meat but yes to fish, eggs and the rest of the items that vegetarians eat) being confused. Fish is an animal product, thus is it not vegetarian or vegan.

Why should we see bees as having more merit? May be we do not believe that they have any intellectual value? They can’t feel anything?

We see how they know what flowers to go to, they can communicate with one another, share information, create hives and communities, and bees support one another. This to me personally seem to show intelligence, value, and that these bees care for one another. I can see emotion to what they do, how they react and attack if needed.

Bees do feel pain, they are part of the Phylum Arthropoda family. Compassion is a word that at times appears to be just thrown around like fairy dust in the animal cruelty veg head world. If we do not feel compassion for other living beings is one truly vegan? Bees have a nervous system, of course they feel pain and just like any other living creature they have a family, friends, things they want to do, emotions, places to go and so on.

Oppression is Oppression. Compassion goes against oppression, compassionate beings want freedom, love and equal rights for all beings. This should be no different for bees. Bees just like any other living creature was not created for human beings, they were created for their own reasons to exist. Not everything revolves around humans. This reflects my thoughts also with fur which I have spoken about in the past. As human beings our egos are massive and always hungry for a bigger “better” fancier power trip. Why do we feel the need to own this?

Depending on how one collects their honey and the standards of the bee farmer will play a major role in this factor but I want to stick with the basics here. Typically honey bees are, to use a bit of an extreme word to help create a visual, enslaved. The Queen bee is replaced typically every two years when it can actually live as long as five years. What I mean is, they are killed they aren’t released into the wild or anything like that. This is done to have control over the hive so honey production is kept at a maximum.

Queen bees can be sent from all over the world and deal with poor conditions such as; heat, chilling weather, banged around, exposed to insecticides or even left out in the sun for hours.

Normally hive colonies are split in half according to what the keeper wants, not the queen. So their environment has been modified, way of life, needs, community, and quality of life. When manipulating the bees, most beekeepers use a smoker to maintain control and possibly to prevent getting stung. The smoke also gets the bees to gorge themselves on honey, this causes them to calm down and alters their normal reaction to alarm the colony.

I’d like to again remind readers that I am focusing on commercial honey farmers, so this may not apply to your neighbor who sells you honey or anything along those lines!

Bees gather pollen in sacs and nectar from the flowers, the honey is stored in the hive as winter food for the bees. Sometimes bees make more than they can eat, but bee farmer’s take more than just the leftovers. According to James E. Tew, an Extension Specialist in Apiculture at Ohio State University in Wooster, “Commercial beekeepers frequently extract all fall-season honey and then feed colonies either sugar syrup or corn syrup in quantities great enough to provide all the winter food the bees would need.” We are feeding bees corn syrup and all this junk that ends up being transmitted to other things in our environment…eeeeehhhhh scary.

What the bees are use to eating and thriving on is even altered by human beings then.

We have manipulated bees, our food, their food, the environment so much that bees are dying off.

Commercial bees are used in the production of about 100 foods, including; almonds, avocados, broccoli, canola, cacoa, cherries, cucumbers, lettuce, peaches, pears, plums, sunflowers, melons, berries, and tomatoes. Even the clover and alfalfa crops we feed to dairy cows are sometimes pollinated by bees. So yes, there are even “rental bees”!

It’s nearly impossible to find many fruits and vegetables now without some sort of bee product on it. But that doesn’t mean that we all shouldn’t TRY to show some compassion and stay away from beeswax products, bee pollen, honey and honey comb.

Some may see this view point as being dogmatic, yet what I personally want to do is show more compassion.

The pesticides used in foods for consumption of human beings is harming bees, that’s a fact. With compassion out of the picture if that doesn’t do anything for you consider the fact that we are poisoning and killing bees. Without bees agriculture, ecosystems and our food is at risk.

This creates not harm to just the bees but the whole environment. It’s bigger than you, me, the fact that may be you hate bees because you’ve gotten stung before or blah blah blah.

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Here are some great articles on honey if you are interested in learning more.

This is one by one of my favorite sites, Natural News.

The Tasty Vegan discusses bee products specifically.

Also, more information on why to avoid honey and bee products by PETA.

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Overall what I am trying to say here is why should be see bees as being less valuable, why do we just have to have THEIR honey which is not ours to consume and we can live, thrive and so on without it. Commercial honey bees have it extremely tough, being used, abused, killed, taken from their families, manipulated and given corn syrup even. Where is the compassion?

Thank you all for stopping by and taking the time to read my post. This is just my personal view point on honey and bees, so please feel free to take it or leave it. Much love ❤ and raw power 😉

Jess