a smooth sea never made a skilful sailor

1) honeybees do not produce “extra honey.” And beekeepers don’t take some of the honey, they take all of it.

Because I am!

Beekeepers make sure hives are fed before there is pollen in the air, protected from predators and the elements, and have enough honey to sustain themselves. We don’t take all of it.

But overproduction of honey leads to stagnation in the hive. It puts stress on the queen to lay eggs, and when they inevitably fill up all their space with honey (instead of filling up the multiple empty, clean boxes of frames beekeepers might put on top of the main hive box), the queen can get so stressed she dies. If there’s a spike in the weather and the hive hasn’t prepared new queen brood, that’s it! The colony is dead. Because there wasn’t enough space for eggs and honey in the hive.

Beekeepers take excess honey. We are constantly monitoring the state of the hive, checking for parasites, analyzing the eggs for diseases, and making sure they are fed and healthy (usually with sugar water and pollen substitutes until they have made enough honey to sustain themselves in the early spring months). If a queen dies prematurely, we make every attempt to replace her to save the colony.

I know there’s an urge to patronize everyone who works in the farming industry, but try to understand the differences between small scale agriculture and industrial farming. There IS a difference. And stop spreading misinformation.

If you’re this passionate about ethical consumption, look into some of the ecofeminist research on non-hierarchal interspecies relationships (working on building animal-human relationships in a non exploitative way).

Yea Chickens are some of the most abused animals on big factory farms and I’ll be the first to admit it’s criminal and more needs to be done to regulate this.

Yes selective breeding over time has caused an increase in the ammount of eggs produced by chickens and factory farms have some messed up practices to get more eggs from them including forced moutling.

THIS IS WHY YOU SUPPORT LOCAL FARMERS AND THEIR EGGS