HONEY

[Guest guest]

Jessica,

 

To answer your question about why honey, here's an excerpt from

PETA's factsheets. As you can see, honey is full of cruelty:

 

How About Honey?

 

In the honey industry, the buzz word is profit. Like factory farmers,

many beekeepers take inhumane steps to ensure personal safety and

reach production quotas. It is not unusual for larger honey producers

to cut off the wings of the queen bee so that she cannot leave the

colony, or to have her artificially inseminated on a bee-sized

version of the factory farm " rape rack. " (6) When the keeper wants to

move a queen to a new colony, she is carried with " bodyguard " bees,

all of whom--if they survive transport-- will be killed by bees in

the new colony.

 

Large commercial operations also may take all the honey instead of

leaving the 60 pounds or so that bees need to get through the winter.

They replace the rich honey with a cheap sugar substitute that is not

as fortifying or tasty. In colder areas, if the keepers consider it

too costly to keep the bees alive through the winter, they will

destroy the hives by pouring gasoline on them, killing most of the

bees with the fumes, and setting them on fire. Other times, keepers,

who feel that lost bees are easily replaced, allow them to die when

trees are sprayed with insecticide. Bees are often killed, or their

wings and legs torn off, by haphazard handling.

 

To produce a pound of honey, bees must get pollen from 2 million

flowers and must fly more than 55,000 miles.(7) Honeybees returning

to the hive from a pollen-seeking expedition " dance " in figure eights

to " map out " a route for other bees to follow. These dances " encode

information about the distance and direction of a target that can be

miles away from the nest, " said Thomas D. Seeley of Cornell

University.(8)

 

According to the Cook-DuPage Beekeepers' Association, humans have

been using honey since about 15,000 B.C., but it wasn't until the

20th century that people turned bees into factory-farmed animals. In

1987, the honey " crop " netted $115.4 million.(9) Luckily, many

sweeteners are made without killing bees: Rice syrup, molasses,

sorghum, barley malt, maple syrup, and dried fruit or fruit

concentrates can replace honey in recipes.(10) Use these substitutes

to keep your diet bee-free.