Anyone with an interest in vegetarianism or veganism, particularly but not exclusively if they have a concern about bees
In particular, anyone who has an interest in eating foods that are pollinated by bees .. like apples, pears, peaches, apricots, almonds, squash, cucumber, pumpkin, some pulses, sunflowers and many, many other edible flora.
The issues are far from straight-forward
I must first explain why I feel I'm qualified to comment on this text.
I have been vegetarian (no, not vegan), for around 25 years now [2005] and understand many of the issues relating to both vegetarianism and veganism. In practice, I'm not so far from vegan, but I cannot claim to be `true' to the philosophy.
I have been a beekeeper here in the UK for around 16 years, so have a pretty good understanding of bees and beekeeping, including the difficult choices that beekeepers sometimes have to make .. especially when vegetarian.
For the record, the main reason that I'm not vegan is that, to me, veganism is an absolute state requiring no harm or exploitation whatever to any living creature. My understanding of that state means that I cannot conceive of any way that I personally could achieve that state, because there are more traps and hurdles that I could ever hope to surmount.
I take therefore a compromise position and make considered choices about how far I am prepared to go to meet my personal philosophy.
Bees are manipulated worldwide to produce many products for human use: honey, beeswax, propolis, bee pollen, royal jelly and venom. They are intelligent insects with a complex communication system.
In some parts of the world, bee larvae are also eaten, sometimes as a delicacy, sometimes as part of a subsistence diet.
Their services are harnessed as vital pollinators for a great many of the plants upon which we and other creatures depend. Although there are other pollinators than honey bees, few are as effective and very few are active during the marginal seasons. What makes honeybees what they are is the fact that they are active all year round without a hibernation period. That's why they collect and store honey .. so they can survive when there are no nectar or pollen sources or when it's too cold, or wet, for them to fly. Other insects simply hibernate.
As insects go, bees are certainly clever, though we should be wary of overstating their intelligence. They're far less intelligent than even most lower mammals, although extraordinarily adapted and capable as a colony.
Because bees are seen flying free, they are also often considered free of the usual cruelties of the animal farming industry. However bees undergo treatments similar to those endured by other farmed animals. They go through routine examination and handling, artificial feeding regimes, drug and pesticide treatment, genetic manipulation, artificial insemination, transportation (by air, rail and road) and slaughter.
In comparison with other livestock, bees certainly are free. If nothing else, it's very difficult to keep bees captive, though it is possible. An example of the near-captive situation is pollination in glasshouses and polytunnels. I can't speak authoritatively for other countries, but I know most UK beekeepers are very reluctant indeed to put honeybees in these conditions. Beekeepers know that their bees really don't like being enclosed like that. Bumble bee and some of the solitary bees, whose foraging range is smaller, are more tolerant, though it's still far from ideal. Unfortunately, a huge and increasing amount of our soft fruit and salad vegetables are now grown this way.
Honeybees do undergo `routine examination and handling', however one should be careful not to misunderstand those words. When `handling' my bees, mostly what I'm handling is the wooden frames that contain the honeycomb. I'm doing that to check for diseases and parasites, space for them to store their honey and for signs of them swarming. Sometimes whilst doing that, I will actually touch the bees gently, because that way I can make them move away from an area of comb. I'll do that when I'm looking for specific diseases of the larvae. I do this very gently, partly because I don't want to hurt them and partly because they have a very direct and immediate way of explaining that they don't like what I'm doing. A colony of several tens of thousands of bees is capable of making a very strong demonstration of their dislike if they're upset enough!
Artificial feeding is done by some beekeepers, usually where the hive type is less than ideal for the bees in winter and occasionally when it's been a bad season and the bees have failed or are failing to collect enough honey. Over most of the last decade or so in the UK, that has not been necessary, though a few beekeepers have in the last couple of years had to feed their bees which would otherwise have starved to death. And that's not because we're `stealing the honey'. There's been none to `steal'.
Many countries have indeed become drug and pesticide dependent. I think there are only two exceptions to that .. the UK and New Zealand, both of whom have long had a minimal drug philosophy. The philosophy has worked well because we now have admirably low instances of some of the main diseases. The bad news is that the alternative to drugs and pesticides is sometimes the mandatory destruction of the colony. I'm relieved to say that doesn't happen very often now.
Queen bees are artificially inseminated with sperm obtained from decapitated bees. Queens are systematically slaughtered every two years because over time their egg producing abilities decline so their whole hive becomes unproductive and uneconomic. In Israel they are killed and re-queened every year.
Bees can be artificially inseminated, though there is no decapitation of the males necessary (wherever did the Vegan Soc. get that?). However this is a very unusual procedure done primarily for research and by a few queen breeders. The males do die in the process, but then the males always die when mating. The queens that result are usually much inferior to naturally mated queens and are, because of the difficulty of the procedure, very expensive indeed. Artificial insemination is very definitely the preserve of scientific breeding. Even most queen breeders prefer naturally mated queens both as the breeder queens and for honey production.
Yes, most queens are killed after a couple of years. That has, though, only a little to do with our interests in her egg-laying and a lot to do with the worker bees' interests in her egg-laying ability. As she starts to become less productive, the workers will either raise a new young queen and kill the old queen themselves, or they will begin to swarm.
To understand the beekeeper's decisions here, we have to understand what swarming is about. Swarming is the honey bee colony's method of producing `baby' colonies. When they swarm, typically the old queen leaves with half the workers and, hopefully, finds a new home. A week or so later, several of her daughters do the same. The need for this is, of course, to propagate the species, however like many insects, bees can produce far more new colonies than there are nest sites and than there is food to feed them. Inevitably, on average, only one colony will survive the process and the rest will starve or freeze to death, or be killed by a `pest controller'. Long term, the population of bee colonies just won't increase significantly, because of natural wastage or human intolerance.
From the beekeepers point of view, each of those swarms takes resources from the colonies he or she is managing, both in the form of bees and honey. Economically, a colony that swarms in an uncontrolled way may well swarm itself into oblivion, though at least that frees a home for some other, later swarm.
Fortunately for the beekeeper, there's a way to manage swarming that suits both the bees and the beekeeper. In essence, when the bees start to prepare to swarm, we have a few days notice and we preempt them with an artificial swarm. We take the queen and half the adult bees, but none of the brood and put them into a new hive. They then `think' they've swarmed and are happy.
By leaving the original colony nearby and, a few days later, moving it to a different nearby location, most of the flying bees from that colony will drift back to the artificial swarm and with a bit of luck, the original colony will have only a modest number of bees and will decide not to swarm after all. As they would always do in this circumstance, any excess queens will fight for control of the parent colony.
As a vegetarian, swarm management is one of those tough issues one has to face. By making the artificial swarm I'm guaranteeing that most of the queens will kill each other. But then most of them would have died anyway through starvation or freezing.
I probably have one other even tougher decision. What to do with the extra colony I may have gained. Often it'll replace a colony that's died out naturally, sometimes I'll find another beekeeper who wants it, sometimes I can't. Then it gets `united' with another colony of my own and either I kill one of the queen, or I leave it to the bees to do so. Either way, a queen will die .. there's no other way if the population is to remain stable.
When beekeepers manipulate combs many bees are crushed and killed. Hives have smoke puffed into them to calm bees down and make them easier to handle. Special excluders or devices that violate the bees' space are attached to hives to collect bee products from bees as they enter hives. Bees are separated from their hives by being shaken vigorously or jetted out with powerful streams of air. They may have their legs and wings clipped off. Clipping the wings of queen bees prevents them from swarming (flying off!).
Yes, bees get crushed. Believe me that all the beekeepers I know try very hard not to do that, but realistically it's impossible. I hate doing it. But I do have to look through the colonies. In the past, that wasn't true .. one could leave the bees alone and they'd be fine; but that has changed, thanks to a very nasty parasite called VARROA DESTRUCTOR. For the first time ever, honey bees need our support to survive. They have absolutely no defence against this mite, which destroys a colony, typically in two or three years. Right now, the bees' only protection from this mite comes directly from the beekeeper. End of story.
The writer seems confused about `excluders'. An excluder is a wire screen that mimics the narrowing of the gap between combs so that the queen stays in the brood nest area of the hive. they don't collect bee products, they define jut define the upper and lower areas of the hive, which helps to stop the bees building brood cells across the gaps between frames, where they will be damaged by the beekeeper. They also help to keep brood out of the honey area, which is preferred by consumers who, understandable, don't like dead larvae in their honey.
A wire mesh is used by some beekeepers to collect pollen. It's with this item that the writer is probably getting confused. Yes these `steal' pollen, though many beekeepers use them to collect pollen to feed back to the bees in early spring when there's sometimes a shortage in nature.
Clipping legs of bees would be stupid and would achieve nothing. Clipping wings of queens does not, as I drum into my students, stop bees swarming. It merely slows them down by a few days, allowing more time for us to do an artificial swarm. I'm told that bee wings are like finger nails. There's no feeling whatsoever in them and the bee is not pained at all.
Swarming is the natural way for reproduction, increase and survival of the species, at least in the wild. However, beekeepers are constantly trying to prevent this natural phenomenon and will use artificial pheromones, wing clipping and cage queens to keep their colony under control.
If pheromones or caging the queen worked, I'm sure many would use them. They don't work and beekeepers don't do it, though a few may try caging. If you cage a colony that wants to swarm, you'll have a really hard time when you open the hive, because understandably they do not like that treatment and will likely explain that to you quite assertively!
Beekeepers feed artificial pollen substitutes and white sugar syrup to colonies, often to replace the honey that has been removed. If these practices are carried out over long periods of time they lower hive productivity and lifespan. Colonies fed on their natural food - honey and pollen - result in larger emerging bees and more vigorous bees.
Pollen supplements are just that .. supplements. They cost money and few beekeepers bother as the bees are usually quite capable of finding their own. If used at all, pollen supplements are used to cover a dearth of natural pollen in the wild. Fortunately, as farming practices become gradually `greener', natural pollen is more often available for them. The supplements may be from real natural pollen, soya flour, or a mix of the two.
Beekeepers feed sugar syrup if the bees don't have enough honey. Sometimes this is because they've removed too much honey and are trying to redress the situation. Sometimes it's because the bees have been unable to find enough for themselves. Fortunately, with our later Autumns, this happens less now (here in the south of the UK, anyway). I haven't needed to feed for around 12 years now.
Please don't be mislead by the `white sugar' comment. Feeding stored honey back to bees is frowned upon because it can spread a couple of quite nasty bee diseases and brown sugar, the `healthy option' for us, is actually very bad indeed for bees.
I think most beekeepers would agree that their bees do better on natural foods and I think most prefer to use them.
Beekeepers have become dependent on the use of synthetic pesticides and antibiotics to combat pests, and this has led to problems of toxicological hazards to beekeepers and bees, and risks of honey contamination.
Sadly this is very true in so many countries. The UK and New Zealand are notable exceptions, but much of the rest of the world administers antibiotics and pesticides with an, IMHO, all too liberal hand.
The entire world's stocks of `Western Honeybees' (Apis Mellifera) with one or two island exceptions is now infested by a very nasty parasite called Varroa Destructor. Without the intervention of beekeepers, for the first time in history, bees probably would not survive. This mite is not a natural parasite of A.M., it is a subspecies of a parasite from an Asian honeybee species that has adapted to our bees. Unfortunately, it has a very aggressive affect on A.M., which bee has virtually no defences against it whatever. Most colonies subjected to Varroa, unless helped by a beekeeper, will die in two to three years and will also cause the infestation of other colonies nearby.
Whilst there are a few pesticide treatments available against the mites, these pesticides are becoming ineffectual. Most of us have used them, because they have until recently worked well. They are used after the honey flow has ended.
Another tough decision for a vegetarian beekeeper. Which species should survive? The one upon which huge amounts of the world's food resources rely, or a deviant parasite with few if any benefits to any other creatures or plants. (Some wasps and ants are believed to eat them if they find them and I guess dead mites probably make a reasonable compost.) My decision is that the bees must live. There is no halfway house. I kill the mites and in so doing I sometimes have to kill bees too. I hate that, but I want the bees to survive. The extinction of bees would be a global catastrophe of almost incomprehensible scale.
Bees are bought and sold worldwide. Transportation means bees may suffer stress, suffocation, overheating or cold. Many die entombed in their packaged coffins. Exotic bees are transported to strange countries and causing problems in the natural environment by spreading disease. They are subsequently treated as feral and nests are destroyed by pouring petrol in hives or bees killed by spraying with liquid soap.
The wording is deliberately emotive, but in essence this is substantially true. The `exotic bees' statement in nonsense, because there are only about eight honeybee species in the world and only one is transported to any extent, Apis Mellifera. Spread of disease and parasites is a very major concern.
In a bid to improve the economics of honey production in South America in the 1950s the government ordered research into the use of the African honeybee. These bees are the most prolific honey producers in the world. Unfortunately, they are also extremely aggressive. All the native bees of South America were stingless but only three species made honey and certainly not in large quantities. Unfortunately, the African honeybees escaped. Thousands of hives of Africanised bees are now destroyed each year in the USA because they have been breeding with and destroying the more docile European honeybees, and they have stung and killed over 600 people.
Well, actually they're not all that productive, but the thinking was that they would be better suited to the very hot climate than the European strains.
I'm afraid the bees did not escape; they were actually released by someone who felt they should not have been contained within their flying enclosures. The person was a locum researcher who misunderstood the situation, not an animal liberationist or similar.
The figures for deaths across the American continent is probably about right over the thirty or so years the record refers, however a startling percentage of those have been killed not directly by the bees, but by crushing in panics of `killer bee swarm scares'. The number is all bee-related deaths and the species is often not known.
Two particular quirks of Africanised bee behaviour are significant in the risk. Yes, they are more aggressive on average, though not as much as some would have you believe. They are also prepared to nest on the ground if they can't find a suitable cavity. A very large proportion of incidents are due to people running into a nest on the ground.
In many countries bees' services are bought for pollination purposes resulting in the bees (and their hives) being transported hundreds or thousands of miles. The food industry is now looking to artificially managed honeybees to provide to pollinate crops because wild bees and other insects (who would naturally pollinate crops) have been and are being destroyed by housing development, industrial pollution, pesticide poisoning, intensive farming practices, destruction of hedgerows, etc. The use of honeybees for pollination is now big business especially in places like New Zealand and America. However, even in the UK commercial beekeepers move hives (to find sources of nectar for honey production, and for pollination). Pollination fees are a very important component of the commercial beekeepers income. Commercially reared bumblebee colonies are now also extensively used to pollinate some glasshouse crops, particularly tomatoes.
All true. There are a few species of solitary bees that are also used for pollination. Throughout the first world, commercial beekeepers rely very much on pollination contracts to help them make a living. The financial pressures on beekeepers are are tough and, in most places, there are no grants or subsidies to help.
The increasing demand for `all year round' vegetable is increasing the use of glasshouses and, inevitably, the bees needed for pollination. Honeybees are not often used under glass. Other species tolerate this better.
Bees are also victims of vivisection and a vast number of experiments are carried out worldwide on these creatures. Unfortunately their generally quiet nature makes the honeybee easily manipulated and it has been claimed that they make an ideal laboratory animal. Many experiments are conducted for research and development into colonies that will produce more honey and thus make more money. In Japan they have irradiated bees to make their sting ineffective in an effort to achieve a 'stingless' bee for easier handling and in Australia trials are being undertaken on a protein in bee venom to treat cancer.
I know little of this. Some sounds very improbable, but...
Honey and other bee products are widely used in folk medicine. However, people with asthma or allergies have been strongly recommended not to take honey or royal jelly after several deaths and severe illnesses. Honey is also not suitable for children under twelve months of age because of the risk of botulism. Bees have been seen drinking from sewage plants and have been known to collect tar, adhesives and paint instead of propolis. Moreover, a nutritional comparison shows that demerara sugar is higher in minerals, such as potassium, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, iron, copper and chlorine. The somewhat dubious health benefits of bee products do not warrant the use and abuse of honeybees. There are many other non-animal alternative medicines available.
I can accept that honey could be a bad idea for certain people with very severe pollen allergies, though many people who suffer hay fever actually find it beneficial to eat local honey and ingesting tiny amounts of the pollen that is present in small-scale produced honey.
The risk to babies is well documented. Honey is a natural antibiotic, due mostly simply to it's high sugar content, but partly due to other enzymes and hydrogen peroxide. However, when the honey is dissolved in water or in the stomach, some bacteria leave can leave a state of `suspended animation' and become active again. The botulism virus is one of them and, whilst in the miniscule quantities present in honey it's harmless in the developed adult gut, it can occasionally be very serious in babies.
Yes, bees occasionally collect the wrong stuff. Perhaps fortunately, not often. The water consumed by bees does not normally get into the honey as honey is produced by evaporation.
Honey is an excellent wound dressing, as is simple sugar paste. Venom gives many MS, ME and arthritis sufferers relief. As they say above though, other medicines are usually available.
The most popular bee for honey production is the European Apis Mellifera. In common with all insects it has a brain and several smaller ganglia (sub-brains) running through its body. In proportion to its size, the brain of the bee is very large. The ganglia have nerve fibres connecting them with the sensory endings on the outer layer of the insect. Other fibres carry nervous impulses from the ganglia to the muscles and internal organs, regulating their action.
On average a colony comprises 42,000-60,000 bees and can survive up to 20 years. However, the lifespan of individual bees is very short. Within the hive there are three types of bee: the worker, the drone and the queen. The worker carries out most types of jobs necessary to keep the colony ticking over including cleaning, feeding larvae, manipulating the wax, processing the honey and foraging or defending the colony. Foraging honeybees communicate food sources to fellow foragers by means of the famous "waggle dance" which involves an intricate series of circles and movements. After the first 20 days or so of its life it acts as a forager, or flying bee, collecting nectar and pollen. The life of the worker lasts about 30 to 35 days. As far as is known the drone's only function is to mate with the queen bee, after which it dies. Under wild conditions the queen lives for five years or so. She has two main functions in life: to mate and lay eggs. She is a very important part of the colony because she passes on her characteristics and controls its size by the number of eggs she produces.
20 years for a colony to survive is almost certainly folklore. We now know that few colonies survive for more than a few years before collapsing from trying too hard when swarming, or from disease due to overuse of comb. In addition to that, as each bee creates a cocoon for itself, within the cocoon of it's predecessor, it only takes a very few years before the comb is too congested to be of use. Undoubtedly those `been there XX years' colonies have died out, been cleared out by wax moth and recolonised by a new swarm.
In wild conditions, few queens survive beyond two or three years. If carefully managed in a colony as a `queen mother' as the source of queens for sale, I've heard of them being kept viable for around eight years, though that's a distinct rarity. Most queen mothers survive five or six years. Like workers, queens just wear out. Gently managed queen mothers wear out much slower.
The honeybee will fly about 800km in her working life and produce just half a teaspoon of honey. A queen may produce half a million eggs in her natural lifespan. However, she will only be allowed to live 2 years in the commercial world producing 150,000 eggs annually during this time. In calm conditions the foraging bee will travel at 24 km per hour and up to 40 km for short periods of time and work for 7 - 10 hours a day.
Some 300,000 tonnes of honey are traded internationally every year, and about four times this much is actually produced. The five major honey producers in the world are the former USSR, China, USA, Mexico, and Turkey.
Around 22,000 million tonnes of honey is consumed in the UK each year most of which (just over 2 million tonnes) is imported from New Zealand. There are around 40,000 beekeepers in the UK but probably only 320 are semi-commercial or commercial enterprises.
Hm, I make that 366 tonnes per person, per year. Something wrong with the maths there, I think.
Pre-digested food made by bees from nectar. The bees collect the nectar from flowers and store it in their primary or honey stomach. Here it is partially digested and converted into the substance we call honey. It is a food source of the bee and is stored in the hive for the lean winter months. The metabolism of honey by the bee creates heat, which maintains the temperature of the hive at 17-34 degrees C. The colony requires approximately 200 lbs of honey a year to survive. It is used by humans as a food, as a medicine and in cosmetics and toiletries.
Secreted from eight small wax glands underneath the abdomen of the bee. The soft wax pours into eight pockets beneath the glands where it solidifies. It is then removed and passed to the mouth where it is worked into hexagonal cells called combs, which are used to form the basic structure of the hive. It is used in cosmetics, toiletries, pharmaceuticals, polishes and candles.
A resinous substance gathered by bees from trees. It is used to fill holes, and varnish and strengthen the hive. Bees also use it as a natural antibiotic, antiviral and antifungal agent. It is gathered by humans by either scraping it off the hive or collecting it on specially made frames. It is used as a medicine and food supplement. It is sometimes called 'bee glue'.
Collected from flowers and brought back to the hive as a load on the hind legs. It is a food source for the bee and is stored in the hive. A colony requires approximately 60lbs of pollen per year to survive. The collection of pollen involves fitting special traps to the hive. These scrape it off and are just big enough to allow the bee through. Bee pollen is used as a food supplement.
This creamy-white sticky fluid is a blend of two secretions from the glands of the worker bees. It is the sole source of nourishment for the queen bee throughout her life. Since royal jelly enables the bee to become a queen, some people believe they can recapture their lost youth by eating it. China, where cost-saving techniques have been devised for gathering it, is a major exporter of royal jelly. Details of methods of collection are a closely guarded secret. It is sometimes called 'bee milk'.
Strictly, Royal Jelly and Bee Milk are a little different, but I guess it rather like comparing whole dairy milk to skimmed dairy milk.
The sting of the bee. Its collection involves the stretching of an electrically-charged membrane in front of the hive. When the bees fly into it they receive an electric shock and sting the membrane, thus depositing the venom. Venom is prized by some for its supposed medicinal qualities.
Bees can certainly react to electric charges by stinging, though whether the charge necessary would cause an `electric shock' is another matter. Bees are so tiny that building up enough charge across them to shock them is not easy without killing them Insectocutor(tm)-style, which would be rather counter productive.