So I’m pretty confused since you say that your not commercial yet in your tags you are promoting buying honey, so I can only assume that you sell honey. And if you do sell honey, that would by definition make you a commercial beekeeping farm. With commercial being “making or intended to make a profit. “ If you sell honey from your farm then you are a commercial business. And that would mean that my original response would absolutely apply to your farm as well. Â
“ We do not murder our hives come winter.”
That’s great that you personally choose not to inflict this industry standard practice, but the vast majority of farms do murder entire hives come winter, and that includes even the smallest farms.
“ The only time we substitute sugar is come early spring when the bees need a boost of energy to start their season”
If you didn’t steal the food they make, then they wouldn’t need any sugar substitute some early spring. Because, being the incredibly intelligent animals that they are who have been managing their hives perfectly by themselves for millions of years, they make enough honey too feed themselves year round.
And as mentioned in my first response, the very fact that you feed them “substitute sugar” is actively very harmful because we know that sugar substitutes actually contribute to the development of disease in farmed honeybees because it doesn’t provide the proper nutrition like honey does and can produce a toxin under heat that kills the honeybees.
And I do also want to quickly note that far from not having enough food, if anything, farmed honeybees create too much honey as a result of the artificial modern hives they are kept in for the sole purpose of exploitation which conditions them to maximise honey production to the detriment of every other function which result sin lack of space, poor thermoregulation, lack of beneficial commensals, too much moisture, bees spending less time with cleaning themselves etc. Â
“ . Killing your own bees is actually a horrible waste of money in local apiaries like ours.”
It’s actually not, and most small time beekeepers are super happy to talk about why they murder the bees they farm because it’s a “horrible waste of money” to not murder them when the amount of honey to be left for the bees is worth more than the cost of new bees in the spring.
To quote one beekeeper on why they murder entire hives “Because that is where the money [or honey] is!” Economics is the reason why it is standard industry practice to murder entire hives, not why people don’t murder them.
“ In fact, all hives reduce their population by up to 2/3 in winter. They are a society of workers that live for their hives and actually will willingly leave the warmth of their huddle for the survival of their sisters and mother. “
I’m not quite sure why you mentioned this? Or why you would think I wouldn’t be aware of this behaviour of honeybees, unlike their wild relatives who are generally solitary creatures. Yes, with honeybees, the males very much get the short end of the stick with very short lifespans, getting the boot in winter after doing their single duty. But unless your somehow trying to justify the murder of entire hives of bees by saying “well they force out their drones in wintertime anyway”  I just don’t see why this is at all relevant to mention?
Like the fact that a certain amount of bees die in winter doesn’t justify murdering for the purpose of profiting from the honey they make as food. That would be like saying, well a certain number of puppies in this litter wont survive the will adulthood so its fine and dandy to just murder the whole litter because it makes economic sense to do so.
“ We do not crush drones for the sake of forcibly breeding our queens. Our new queens go on their own virgin flights come spring and are mated by the drones in flight. It’s actually quite interesting to watch if you have never seen a video!”
Again that’s great that you don’t inflict this industry standard practice, but the vast majority of beekeepers do use Artificial insemination, and your OP was promoting people buying honey form farmers markets, and almost most honey sold at any farmers market will be from farms in which AI is practiced. The reason why its standard industry practice? Because it allows bee breeders to select stocks for economically valued traits in a controlled manner (Its also a method being pushed to try to manage the spread of disease which is rampant in the industry) And because the in flight, random, mating behaviour of the queen to numerous drones (which your talking about) has been difficult to control.
Videos on the practice of AI which is an industry standard practice below:
“ Our queens do not lose their wings, and we do not mark them. A good beekeeper can recognize a queen easily.”
No queen bee “looses” her wings, its industry standard practice to physically clip them more multiple reason. First, because its believed to keep the colony from swarming. Secondly, because it can indicate the year the queen was produced, and lastly, it can be used to mark a specific “particularly valuable” queen bee.
To quote some beekeepers:
“ I’m aware that my neighbours may not share my enthusiasm for bees. I therefore do my utmost to only keep well-behaved colonies in the garden by selecting for docility as a priority when queen rearing. In addition, I make sure any queens heading colonies in the garden are clipped. Queen clipping is the trimming of one wing, preventing the queen from flying any distance should the colony swarm. In the absence of a queen, a prime swarm leaving the hive will either return to the hive or will cluster with the queen a very short distance from the hive. “
“Traditional beekeepers often clip one of the queen’s wings after she mates, controlling her ability to fly, which affects the hive’s inclination to swarm.”
 “Cutting right wings for even years is better than marking the queens for ID purposes. Paint wears off but wing tips do not grow back.”
“ Smoke does not panic bees. The panic comes from the invasion of the hive. The smoke interrupts the pheromones the bees use to communicate which partially silences the “alarm” caused by the pheromones.”
The practice of smoking does panic bees, yes, one of the main reasons to use smoke when harvesting honey is to interfere with the bees’ lines of communication. But it’s also used because the smell of smoke makes them think the hive is going to catch on fire. And their natural reaction to this is to try and save as much honey as they can. If the hive is going to melt, they’re going to need to make a new one. And I don’t know about you, but I think being led to store as much honey as possible (which makes them less apt to sting) because you believe your hive is going to catch on fire is a very panic inducing experience.
“ Poorly managed honeybees are indeed a danger to other bees. This is indisputable. But that is why beekeepers need to be educated, and most are required to take classes on the subject to ensure diseases can be recognized and removed before they can spread.”
Not just poorly managed beekeeping farms, but all beekeeping farms are massively harmful to wild pollinators. We know this as fact. Heck, even you admit to feeding the bees you farm sugar substitutes which are massively harmful to other bees as well as the farmed honeybees. In short, This isn’t a “poor beekeeping practice” issue but a “beekeeping” issue. And I did link to just a few examples of the data we have on this issue in my original response.
“ Honeybee hives aren’t natural, and they don’t help the environment. Originally imported from Europe, raised and managed by beekeepers in order to make honey or to pollinate crops like almonds. It’s an agricultural animal, in the same way that sheep and cattle are. When flowers are abundant, there is plenty of pollen for both honeybees and their wild cousins. But in many landscapes, or when an orchard stops blooming, farmed honeybees can compete with wild bees for food, making it harder for wild species to survive. Basically, a healthy environment needs bees — but not honeybees”
“ Unfortunately, many bees are also endangered by our agriculture practices. The chemicals spread in fields and the leaching that can carry poisons far from their original source are a threat.”
Yes, industrial farming can also be harmful to wild pollinators, but the biggest threat to wild bees are farmed honeybees. Not only because of the spread of diseases, but because honeybees tend to muscle out wild pollinators in areas where they are introduced. Just like other invasive species, when honey bees and wild native bees overlap, the honey bees aren’t the good guys.
“Honeybee populations are on the decline.”
This isn’t true. Apis mellifera, which is the species of bee exploited for most honey production, are not even close to being threatened, but thousands of lesser known species are. And beekeeping only boosts numbers of these captive bees. And when it comes to pollinators, wild bees are far better pollinators and its their populations which are in decline, which are being directly threatened/harmed by the presence of domestic honey bees.Â
And while I very much appreaciate the respectfull responise, I do take a fair bit of offense here to the seeming claim that vegetarianiam is in any way an ethical action. That it could be at all linked to veganism. Vegetarianism has nothing to do with ethics in practice since it supports all the very same injsutcies as the standard carnist way of living does. Vegetarians also support the meat industries through their consumption and use of dairy, eggs, wool, leather etc. Spent dairy cows and their calves are slaughtered for their flesh, sheep farmed for wool are slaughtered for their flesh, spent egg-laying hens are slaughtered for their flesh, and so on and so on. And that’s not even mentioning the brutality of these forms of exploitation. And then there are all the other forms of animal exploitation that vegetarians support. Vegetarianism means nothing to the vicitms of animal exploitation, to the cows, hens, sheep, (yes bees), rodents, dogs, horses etc.Â
Vegetarians may not consume butchered animal flesh, but they are ethically in exactly the very same boat in terms of ethics as animal flesh-eaters/carnists.
~ Why go vegan instead of vegetarian?
~ Land of hope and glory (a documentary set in the UK)
~ Dominion (another documentary set in Australia)
~ Testimonies from many former farmers here
~ Here on Veganism and Vegetarianism
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