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Richard Y Chappell's avatar

Interesting! What do you think it would take for bees to live positive (in expectation) lives, and might advocacy to that end be more tractable than advocating for abstention from honey?

(Is it really "conservative" to estimate that time spent as a bee is "10% as unpleasant" as time spent as a factory-farmed chicken? Without knowing much, I would have guessed that a fair portion of a bee's life is reasonably pleasant, whereas factory-farmed chicken life is basically unrelentingly awful?)

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John's avatar

I sent this to my brother, a canadian beekeeper. His response:

This has so many holes in it I don't know where to begin.

The business has two sources of income, the first renting bees out to pollinate crops, most if not all of these hives the honey is not collected. These bees live a terrible life. This business mainly exists in the US, not Canada.

Bee hives that are used to produce honey are a totally different business, where bees are well cared for, and stress levels are kept at a minimum as that produces the best harvest.

So if you are really a hard core vegan you should avoid all crops which need bees to pollinate, good luck with that one, in the US, crops relie on these bees as there are few wild pollinators left after pesticides have made them all but extinct.

There are also bees that are part of both businesses, as was my bee keeping. These bees stay in one location and are well cared for and likely live a much better life than wild bees. This is likely where most of our honey comes from.

(Smokers burn their wings off. Where did that come from?)

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