I'll admit, I still eat honey. I'm vegan for ethical reasons, but the situation with honey bees can really be argued either way - we need bees to pollinate things, without beekeepers hives, farmland and urban areas would be massive dead zones.

ETA: Here in New Zealand, its relatively easy to get honey from smaller, more ethical operations.

...we need bees to pollinate things, without beekeepers hives, farmland and urban areas would be massive dead zones.

I agree with this. The decline in bee populations has a huge impact on ecosystem health. I hope someday to have my own backyard hive (in which I will try not to crush or freeze the bees), but I do believe my local beekeeping operations are on balance a positive thing.

Exactly!!!! But be sure to check out your brand of maple syrup thoroughly, because maple sap is cut with fat in the syrup-making process. The FDA does not require the faf to be listed on the label-- and in many cases, maple syrup contains LARD.

With respect, the argument that beekeepers are keeping the bee populations up is like saying rare livestock breeders are keeping an old tradition alive without which many rare breeds would become extinct.

The bees that are on the decline in the wild are not the same sub groups of bees that are kept for the honey industries. Those bees are not helping to keep alive the wild swarming or solitary bees of which there are many different strains and all are under threat.

What we do need is to look to providing (or returning) appropriate habitats for those bees to find shelter and food and to replenish their numbers. The honey industry will not help in this process.

I can go along with that; thank you for sharing.

I accept that bees make the vegetables I eat possible, even though they are often mistreated in the process. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be much of an alternative to this. I can't stop eating vegetables.

However, I can and do draw the line at honey. I don't know, with 100% certainty, that the bees experience suffering. But I don't need honey to be happy and healthy, and there are many alternatives (maple syrup, agave nectar, even substitutes like BeeFree Honee). So going without is not a hard decision.

I eat honey and I'm a vegan. Local bee keepers are doing a lot of good keeping bee populations going when they is a huge problem with a plummeting bee population in the world.

No one group defines what a vegan is. I have been around for many years and been a vegetarian decades ago. The issue of eating honey was never defined as vegan or not vegan until the last couple decades. Being vegan has become polarizing. I don't enter the controversy.

News flash: vegans don't eat honey.

Some words are open to interpretation, or clarification. "Vegan" is not such a word.

For example: I have blond hair. My hair is ivory-blond with no red in it. NO ONE is ever going to describe my hair as red or brown! However, many shades of blond border on brown or red..And so, one person will describe someone's hair as "blond," someone else will describe that same person's hair as "red," and someone else will call it "strawberry-blond." And none of those three people will be inaccurate in their description.

For example: I am 5' 3 1/2" and 111 pounds. You know how on social media sites, you're offered the option of calling yourself either "Slim/slender" or "Average?" I lean toward selecting the "Slim/slender" option, but not without hesitation. Either option could conceivably describe me, because those are relative terms.

For example: I consume a vegan diet. A "vegan" diet is free of ALL animal substances. Honey contains flower nectar. AND bee enzymes. I do not consume honey.

Apparently, "I eat vegan, but I eat honey" is the new "I am a vegetarian, but I eat fish." "Vegan," by definition, means ZERO animal ingredients. There are no degrees of "vegan." There are "lacto-", "lacto-ovo," and "ovo-" vegetarians. And. vegetarians who eat honey.

Vegans who eat honey? No such thing!