Why vegans do not eat honey?

Veganism is defined as a way of life of life which excludes all forms of exploitation of and torture to the animal kingdom. The vegans do not eat flesh, fish, fowl, egg, honey, animal milk and its derivatives. They only rely on the plant kingdom for food.

There are a few reasons why the vegans exclude honey from their menu.

The vegans feel that the honey bees are enslaved. The beekeepers use smoke to calm the bees. Smoke neutralizes the alarm pheromone which the guard bees release and prevents the entire colony from becoming agitated.

The beekeepers use to move around the beehives in search for honey. During the migration, the beehives are carried from a place to another usually at night. Like human, bees suffer in the journey. That’s why bees are agitated and used to sting people when the beehives are unloaded from the lorry when the beekeepers arrive at a new place.

A queen can live up to 5 years. However, a queen may be killed by human after 2 years when its reproduction capacity is dwindling and replaced by a successor queen.

Honey is the result of hard work of the bees. Honey bees travel 88,000 km and visit 2 million flowers in order to gather nectar and produce 0.5 kg of honey. The honey is the food of the bees. They may have extra honey which the human may take. But, how often human only takes the extra honey?

As such, the vegans feel that taking away honey from the bees is an exploitation of the bees which is not acceptable to them at all.

Posted by Chai Yong of http://www.the-honey.com