Why don't vegans eat honey? 

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bruv why do we do all this just to get honey. just use maple syrup

When she calls you honey instead of Agave.

I thought I knew a lot about bees, but this video expanded on aspects I didn't know. Thank you.

Me before this video: "How can honey be bad? I don't understand." 6.20mins later: "Yeah fair enough."

This stuff should be taught in schools but sadly are not

I had no idea about this.. I grew up having home made honey and saw how my granddad would care for his bees (he only had one box, not to sell, just for personal use) and I thought that was how everyone would care for the bees because he cared a lot about their well being.. thank you for this explanation, now I can see how bad honey can be and understand things that never crossed my mind! I mean, bee insemination?! People are insane!

Imagine diligently working a job, only to have people take a portion of your hard earned money and replace it with monopoly bills...

i’m a vegan and before this video i would consume honey, and honestly i’m ashamed for not educating myself.

I’m vegan and I still eat honey every now and then. But that will stop right now! I didn’t know the truth about the way the bees are treated and it is awful.

there’s sugar, maple syrup, agave, and even vegan honey. what is the point in all this?!

I’ve been vegan for a month or so now and haven’t eaten honey in ages anyway but this really cleared up in my head why we don’t eat honey. I wish people would just be more open to learning about how their choices affect the world around them rather than just dismissing it and having negative connotations with the word vegan. So glad I made the change and I don’t think I’ll ever go back

Thank you for this. My sister was asking me about this very question and since I am new to veganism, I didn't know all the issues in the honey industry. This answers a lot of questions we both had.

I didn't know they killed off the whole hive during the winter 🥺

I’m Vegan and don’t eat honey but never really knew why, thank you for sharing this

You convinced me. I'm not eating honey anymore

This gives such a bad name to bee keepers. This is definitely accurate for industrial honey, but local honey is not at all made like this. Bees make more honey than they could possibly eat, and REAL beekeepers take little, leaving enough honey and plus some for the bees. They don’t poison their bees or mutilate their queens, they take care of the bees. Most beekeepers don’t use gas, as bees aren’t just outright aggressive. They can learn to trust you, and will. Its like having pet chickens and you happen to get eggs because that’s what they produce an excess of.

We can save the bees without eating honey! Saving a species doesn't have to be beneficial to us!

I gave up honey once I became vegan simply cause I thought "honey is for bees" similar to "milk is for baby cows" but I had no idea what happened in the honey bee industry. I imagined a peaceful meadow and a thriving echo system much like they would want me to believe. Good video!

Also, on the bee intelligence thing - having taken linguistics, while some bees can communicate pollen sources in a dance akin to language, they have no word of "up" and never devised one. In an experiment, a nectar source was placed high up on a pole - workers relayed the location of the pole to the hive but when more workers were sent there, they just swarmed around the pole.

Thank you for this video, as a backyard beekeeper I think there is a big difference between the commercial practices and the "amateurs" as in any agricultural industry. Bees are absolutely amazing animals and fascinating. Their complex social structure and communication is mind blowing. I do not clip queen wings and my bees can swarm away whenever they feel like (and they will fly away if not content!). It is my goal to keep them happy and healthy so they do not leave and will focus on collecting honey to the point that they make more than they need (as they do since they are always working). Farmers in The Netherlands plant narrow strips of wildflowers between mono-crops, I think this helps all pollinators and supports healthy ecosystems, a rising tide lifts all ships. Thanks for being vegan!

I just found out that you came to visit my school last year and I can't believe I missed the opportunity to meet you! You helped completely change how I want to diet when I live on my own. Keep doing what you're doing!🌟

3:43 These are not bees, they are flower flies. Flower flies also known as hover flies are also important pollinators.

I am a new "bee" in veganism haha :) and there is a lot to learn . I am binge watching your videos. Just today I was wondering if honey is vegan ,and here is the answer! Thank you so much ,you inspired me to go vegan and help the planet ,our animal friends and also my own health . I am really thankfull ♡

Super informative as always, thank you!

Honestly, I hate humans sometimes.

Nice one, you should do why vegans are against selling sheep fur

Save the bees by letting animals be.

thanks for this video. im a vegan and for a while i didnt eat honey at fist, but then thoughtt that honey wasnt unethical or unsustainable. after doing more research and also seeing this video, i wont be buying honey in the future. i do still have a jumbo jar of it, but im not going to throw it out or be hard on myself, ill use it. the goal is to keep growing as a person and we're imperfect, its okay to keep learning.

This is wildly generalised ed. A friend of mine has a couple of hives. Of which he takes the upmost care. No bees a culled, no bees are harmed during honey harvest. His hives are caught not bought, It really does depend who you get your honey from. It's one of the few animal products that I believe if you get it from the right person you aren't harming the bees.

Hi Ed - Great video as always but would you be able to add the links for any references, stats and studies to the description section of the video? I always think it's important that everything should be cited.

This needs to be spoken about more, thank you Ed for spreading such an important message. Save the bees 🐝

I keep bees and do none of the things you describe, never killed one.

Me when Ed says pessimism is a sign of intelligence: 🤭 "Oh, you."

Wow I was literally thinking yesterday "has Earthling Ed ever made a video on honey?? I hope he does" that's crazy

I hate it when people kill insects for no reason, just leave them alone they aren’t hurting you in any way.

Hi 👋 👋 👋 I am a beekeeper but : - I don't kill the bees. - I don't buy queens showed in the video. - I don't give them sugar only raw honey. But ... I still get the same price on my honey as any other beekeeper because the costumers don't care 😬

This video brought up viewpoints I had never heard before. Thank you for sharing.

Thank you for sharing Ed, didn’t know about this at all

*Create a Better World by...........................Living Vegan*

There's just no way this is regular beekeeper practice. I can see it being a corporation approach, but none of this seems cost effective for farmers.

I really needed that video to send to friends and family when they ask “not even HONEY???”

I'm not going to say no one does this. But I have bees and it's nothing like this lol. They are nice. And I try to help them and in return I take some honey for me. And I help them thru the winter.

...because a spoonful of honey is a lifetime of work for a bee. #NoExploitationIsTooSmall

I’m just becoming a vegan and didn’t know about the bee cruelty. I have a bee and butterfly garden and we have lots of bees in the summer in the garden. We planted plants and flowers that we researched they would like. We get lots of butterflies too. We rescue some bees who are sleepy or drunk by placing them in the undergrowth so they’re safe until they wake up. It’s disgusting how non humans are treated. Since I changed to vegan my asthma has all but gone and I’ve lost weight. My rashes have gone I don’t cry or feel sad as much and I feel more awake.

Being vegan, I never ate honey because I felt it wasn’t my food to take. However, I had no idea how unbalancing domestic bees are for the ecosystem and the way they are bred. This was very informative. Will definitely share!

I've been wanting to find good sources of information about this for a while. Can you show some pointers or links to where you found out about the negative implications on the ecosystem?

Very good. I always learn something new, even as a beekeeper's child. I have never heard of the industrial practices you explain at the beginning, but the arguments still stand.

Great video, very clear and compelling. Where can I see citations? I want to send this to my mother in law, but I was looking for some sort of citations so that I could also see the literature, or sources to this video so as to better prepare arguments I've had, and you've provided against honey consumption.

Thank you for posting this. I am on a plant based diet except for honey, and have looked for a very long time for detailed arguments against honey production and have never found anything like this through quick googles. Super helpful, I will be rethinking honey consumption going forward. :)

Thanks so much for laying this out, Ed! This comes up a lot in my daily vegan travels and people can’t seem to compute that there can be exploitation and cruelty to bees in the same basic ways we do to agriculture animals. Also, side note, I don’t even like honey. Agave nectar is way better!

Thanks for making this 👍

This is highly exaggerated. While I am sure some bee keepers do this, the ones I know locally do not kill the drones, they let the queens and drones breed naturally. They also rarely cull a hive. They may kill a queen if her bees are too aggressive to be safe but it's very rare to completely cull an entire hive. This is done if they are so aggressive that they are an immediate hazard to everyone around them and they can't afford the few months it would take for a new queen to replace the genetics. Usually if it's not crazy aggressive, but still too aggressive, they just replace the queen and let the bees replace themselves naturally. When bee keepers do cull its usually just with soapy water so that the hive isn't a danger to another group of bees. A good bee keeper also will only take as much honey as necessary and make sure the hive always has enough to not starve. Like with most products knowing where you are getting it from makes a world of difference. Since honey is more of a luxury item for me, I will spend more to buy from an ethical bee keeper.

Thank you for this, Ed!!

I did know all that I must admit . My experience with honey keeping was different as my neighbour was bee keeper as small holder. He didnt do non of that.

Could we please get a link to this study? I'd like to study it.

I am a vegan for almost 6 years now. Back in my past took a class in beekeeping and kept bees for a season. I don't know about commercial bee production practices either here or in Europe. Just want to comment about a few things that Ed said and that are not happening in the smaller, local honey production hobbies and businesses in the USA. at 0:26 - he speaks about instrumental insemination; in nature, virgin queens go on mating flights. Her mating flights, across a few days, will result in collecting sperm from 10-25 drones. When a drone (male) bee inseminates a new queen (female) he soon dies because his endophallus breaks along with associated abdominal tissues that are ripped from the drone's body after sex. A portion of the endophallus remains inside the Queen. The male falls to the ground and soon dies from his few moments of sexual bliss. So while it seems harsh that bee breeders are crushing drones to inseminate new queens, the reality of nature, sadly, is about the same for drones. at 0:50 - swarming is said to be bad for business, which is true. It also can be bad for neighbors when new colony swarms take off and land to make a colony in someone's attic or walls. It is much better to stop the swarming at the hive of origin and it is the beekeeper's responsibility to prevent swarms from happening through correct practices that include destruction of the queen cells - this must be done at least 2 times per week to prevent swarming in the spring. (I was a bad beekeeper - my hive swarmed and my neighbors complained - putting a halt to my hobby. I relocated my hive to a friend with a small, local honey hobby.) at 1:03 - where Ed says that after the hives are harvested for honey, they are often culled for the winter because culling of hives is cheaper than feeding the hive through the winter months. I wasn't taught to do that - bees are in decline and a hive is a very precious team. I live in California and bees are easy to overwinter if you don't take every honey super. I was taught to just leave one for the bees and harvest the remaining supers which the bees have overproduced. Hive populations diminish naturally when cold weather comes and one honey super is usually sufficient to keep the hive well fed through the winter. Still, you need to check the hive every week to be sure they have food remaining. It is a practice to feed sugar water if the hive uses up the remaining honey super. Also, water is always made available because bees need the water. at 3:34 Ed speaks about competition between honey bees and native bees and other pollinators. I think in a completely non-agrarian area this is true. In my experience living in California, there are so many agricultural fields that there is an overabundance of flowering plants and I understand that farmers need honeybees for their plants to produce enough nuts and fruits for a successful harvest; wild pollinators have not been abundant enough to do a profitable job. Maybe if permaculture were a more universally practiced production method, where there are wild areas left between the production fields, then the wild bees could take care of the pollination needs for food production. We are not there yet and hives of honey bees are brought to the fields to boost nut and fruit production. I am also concerned about native wildflowers, plants and pollinators. I enjoy gardening and have made a plot of wildflowers and native California plants that will attract pollinators of all kinds at my current home. I notice many different species of wild bees, bumblebees and butterflies visiting and giving more color, movement and life to the area and that fills me with joy. I plan to convert more lawn areas (which the previous owner planted) to native species and home food production over time and as my budget allows, and talk with neighbors about the benefits of my native garden to advocate the benefits and to assist them with their conversions. Thank you Ed, for such an important work that you do.

And virtually none of this applies to local small scale production. Huge amounts of misinformation.

Thanks Ed, I've been vegan for 5 years and thought the only reason for not eating honey was the use of sugar syrup.

Thank you, this is such an informative video that I wish everyone would watch.

I love how most of your videos have captions for such a variety of languages. Makes it so much easier to spread the message to non-english speakers as this content isn't very popular or of high quality in many countries (such as in my case) - thanks to the captions I can share your videos with my family and am just so grateful for the impact that they're having

Thanks for making this

Wow, I had no idea. This is so sad 😞

They even exhibit pessimism? Well jeez, I know the feeling, bees. Can't say I blame ya

As a vegan who did eat honey, I am done with that! I had no idea what horrible things were done to bee's, thank you so much for the information

I was wondering about this earlier today because I was offered a jar of honey but took a jar of fig preserves instead. As always, thanks for the information, Ed!

Honey bees are used for pollination so if you eat advocado, and many other fruit and vegetables, you are eating the product of farmed bees. I’m a vegan btw, so can I not eat Advocados now? I also used to own a honey business and the practices shown are just not done, at least not in NZ. For example: we dont want to feed the bees sugar in winter….its expensive to buy and even more expensive to get to the hives, which are often remote. Leaving honey on the hives is better for the bees and dramatically cheaper. We simply could not afford to kill the hives over winter. The pictures of hives being burned are almost certainly hives with proven varroa mite which legally have to be burned, destroying the hives and a lot of other expensive equipment. I’ve seen beekeepers cry doing this. This video has basically made me question a lot of the things Earthlings Ed has said about industries I dont know about.

This owes more to ideology than anything factual. It's not my job to defend the commercial honey industry, but don't tar small-scale beekeepers with the same brush.

Bees are one of the very few animals which consent to be farmed - if your bees dont like your hive, they sod off. The keeper has to care for them - plant flowers, monitor for signs of disease, take only excess honey. What you're objecting to is factory farming - people having one hive at the bottom of the garden is good for your plants; and means we get a sweetner nither shipped halfway round the world nor derived from petrol

Bees are so cute 🥺

All of this also applies to beeswax, found in many cosmetics and creams, lipbalms, candles and so on. Often listed in Latin in ingredients lists, as "Cera alba", or I've seen it also listed as "Cera flava".

For the first couple months of being vegan I still ate honey, but then I saw the horror of the honey industry and immediately stopped consuming it. This videos has more information in it than all of the other videos about honey I’ve seen. Well done.

Alot of what you mention in the first half of the video about bee keeping methods is likley from extreme methods of farming used to put products on shelves in supermarkets not for small, local farmers. I've never seen a local farmer use any of these methods like wing clipping,artifical insemination, killing for the winter, bin-bag deaths or the like. Killing the queen is usually done to save the whole hive E.g. if she is defective at laying eggs (e.g. only lays drone bees) as putting a new queen, or letting the hive raise a new queen is better for them than keeping the old queen. Killing a hive for its temperment is usually if the bees are incredibly aggressive and pose a threat to wildlife, pets or other people that may get close. It's usually a last resort. A keeper may attempt to swap out the hive's queen with a more docile one, which over time can turn the hive more docile too. Ethical bee keeping would be checking the hives regularlly for swarm cells to minimise risks of swarming, instead of clipping wings. Understanding when the hive's might need help or when harvesting honey shouldnt be done. (drought can lead to less flower growth, so less honey to make). A good bee keeper can recognise when to let bees keep any honey they make as a food source for the winter, usually only excess is harvested or midway through the year so bees can still make more honey ready for winter. Some people even bring their bee boxes inside. I support the growth of veganism but spreading misinformation/ not being specific enough about industry vs local, i feel just puts a bad light on it. Especially when I recognised multiple clips in this video that were used out of context to promote the cause, all from ethical and small bee keepers that like to post clips on youtube to educate people about bee keeping.

There are noninvasive approaches for keeping bees as well. I don't feel bad about honey from Old Michael's backyard hive, he loves that box almost as much as his homemade wine. To me the issue doesn't seem to be the honey or collection in and of itself, but rather the industry surrounding it. I feel the same for many animal products. Almost all living things eat other living things. Most plants have structures that mirror nervous systems, and react to being harmed - Logically they should also have a right to exist. I don't think there is any escaping that. Ultimately we're also part of the natural environment, modern society is just not doing that great at adapting symbiotically with other species, save a select few.

Those aren't bees at 3:41. They are hoverflies

The best way I figure for humans to "fix" nature and it's balance is to just f-ing leave things alone! "She'll" come back on her own.

Huge and complex topic, well explained, good video

Thank you so much! Been asked about honey so so many times and admittedly I've never been well informed enough to give a decent argument. This video is a fantastic resource!

The footage of killing bees is taken out of context and without credit or permission. I've seen the video using soapy water and the guy was heartbroken he had to do so. It is not common place to do so at all. The hive was extremely aggressive and you couldn't get within a 100 meters or they would swarm you. That's not how bees are supposed to be and because of safety ( as an example there was a playground close by) he did so. Switching queens was considered but the drones could still continue the aggressiveness to a different hive and he decided it was too dangerous. Soap kills insects quickly and is better than using poison near other hives. If people think that he should've kept them: when an aggressive hive of bees or wasps builds a nest near your house or in a public area an exterminator is called, if an animal attacks people it can be decided its in the best interest of all to euthanize it if there is no safe alternative. The same happened here, if they were left in a secludes area and someone came across them they could kill them. /watch?v=O4ldpyIE5t4

Insects need love too! Save the bee's and stop stealing from them!

What an amazing video! Thank you for making it.

Comparing honeybees to "wild bees" seems a bit off, there a plenty of wild honeybees around, consider referring to them as bumble and solitary bee species. Aside from that, it is certainly possible to keep bees naturally, chemical/treatment free and without any feeding (sugar) yet still attain a sizeable honey crop while still leaving enough food stores for the bees themselves. Natural beekeeping is perfectly sustainable and has been practiced around the world for thousands of years, the problem comes from large-scale commercial farming and lack of proper education on the subject. I am just a beginner beekeeper so take what i say with a grain of salt.

It is a shame that this chanel is so biased and he never talks about small-scale ethical farms (I get that these kinds of farms are maybe not present in UK or US, however in my country there are few of them) it is not like there is no possible way of having ethical animal products (excluding meat) it’s just very hard to get and quite expensive

You are so awesome Ed. Thank you so much for this video

Poor bees. I’m so sorry, animals. 🙏🏼😔🤍🐝

THANK YOU for this! This is one that I’ve read/heard so much discrepancy about with different vegans. To each their own but now I have more information to show people!

Really well explained and mentioning a lot of facts but I have some questions. You say that honey bees harm the other type of bees, but at the same time say that certain types of bees pollinate certain types of plants/flowers. doesn't that mean they don't harm each other? Also, as someone who works with beekeeping as a hobby, I can say from experience that not all honey farmers use these methods and there are more ethical ways to farm honey, such as - only extracting honey in July and leaving the rest of the months for the bees to gather honey for the winter, - moving the bees to indoor storage during winter to ensure the survival of the bees during harsher winters - not clipping wings and instead of checking up on hives and in case they have a queen cell, placing that in another hive avoids swarming and grows into another colony. Bees do feel pain individually, but at the same time bees don't act like other types of mammals, they are all connected as a hive mind, doing what they deem would be most beneficial to the colony. Yes, sometimes some bees get squeezed and die during extraction and maybe 10 bees die when you do it, but a colony has more 20-80k bees meaning the overall bee population doesn't get hurt from that loss. Also, in the video, you say that bees harm plants by not pollinating and instead just bringing pollen back to the hive instead of bringing it to other plants, but to my knowledge, having bees increase crop yield, so saying it doesn't seem weird, I know companies here in Sweden ask bee-keepers to place their colonies near their farms to increase yield, and if a vegan lifestyle takes over globally I also feel that bees will help reduce the amount of farmland and help drive down the cost of agriculture which will benefit everyone. As an ending, I am trying to become vegan, I'm having some difficulties fully committing to it but am eating mostly vegan and I know that's not popular, but even when I become fully vegan I don't believe I will stop working with bees as I feel it still has a beneficial place in a vegan society.

One way in order to avoid honey bees outcompeting native bees is to plant wildflowers which are native to your area. The leading cause to bee declines in the UK is because since world war 2 we have lost 97% of our wildflower meadows. This increases competition between species as they are all fighting over a few individual plant species. If you increase the amount of plant species in your garden, you can help the native bees

I love bees, so I support them! Not by paying for them to be exploited, but by planting flowers and helping any tired bees out with some sugar water.

As a beekeeper myself, most of these practices are not used by your typical local beekeeper. We do not clip our queens, wings, we do not forcefully inseminate the queen, and we NEVER kill our bees/hives UNLESS the bees are Africanized. When a hive is Africanized, it essentially means the queen has a genetic disposition to be incredibly aggressive, and therefore the offspring she produces are also incredible hostile. This can pose a risk for anyone, especially those who are allergic to bees, as they will be highly likely to attempt to sting you if you are near them. This rarely ever occurs, so your typical local beekeeper wants to ensure the longevity of the hive. We also leave enough honey in the hives to get the bees through winter. So, to vegans who don't eat honey: I don't blame you for not wanting to consume mass produced honey, but do not count ALL sources of honey to be as cruel as corporations. Support your local businesses, and but honey from a local beekeeper. Not only would you be able to eat delicious honey again, but you would also be allowing a beekeeper to increase the population of honeybees in your area. Edit: not sure why the creator of this video said they don't spread pollen effectively, that is entirely untrue. Honeybees are just as good at doing so as any other bee. As to competing with other bees, I also don't get this one. All bees collect nectar from plants as their main source of food. Honeybees are a type of bee that processes that nectar and turns it into honey, which can be stored. Flowers refill their nectar "pouches" very frequently, enough so that "competition" wouldn't really be a considerable factor in the decline of other bee species. I would however like to see the creator of this video include their sources instead of just TELLING you what is and isn't happening. Videos like this make gross over-generalizations and polarize people without giving them a true understanding.

This was extremely helpful!!! Although I stopped eating honey when I turned vegan I was never deeply convinced of why I shouldn't and now I am! so grateful for this video

I'm seeing a lot of information, but no sources...

You cannot exploit nature without violence. - Eisel Mazard.

Cmon Ed, where are your sources? You're at a higher level than this.

It seems every living being save for manKIND, is intelligent and work in sync with the ecosystem and we are just trying hard to destroy it with arrogance and ignorance!

Yes, there are some bad beekeepers. There are also lots of good ones that don't do any of the practices slammed on in this video. But if you would rather eat FAKE honey, made in a chemistry lab, than honey made from flowers, be my guest.

Thank you so much for spreding the message I hope there was some kind of media similar to yours, but in Spanish so I can show my mother (an anti-vegan "ecologist") this information in a didactic way (she refuses to read any of the studies I show/send to her + plenty of them are also in English). Wishing you all the luck

Keeping in mind that bees are exploited for almonds and avocados, are we going to quit consuming those too?

"Citation needed"

🐝 Bees are found on every continent except for Antarctica, in every habitat on the planet that contains insect-pollinated flowering plants. Bees feed on nectar and pollen, the former primarily as an energy source and the latter primarily for protein and other nutrients. Most pollen is used for food for their larvae. Human beekeeping or apiculture has been practised for millennia, since at least the times of Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece. Bees have appeared in mythology and folklore, through all phases of art and literature from ancient times to the present day. It is thought that bees originally evolved from hunting wasps which acquired a taste for nectar and decided to become vegetarians. Fossil evidence is sparse but bees probably appeared on the planet about the same time as flowering plants in the Cretaceous period, 146 to 74 million years ago. 🐝🐝 🐝