Non-vegans are often surprised to learn that honey and other bee products are unsuitable for vegans. It's the old storybook image that confuses us: we see honey bees flying around, gathering nectar and taking it back to their hives - what cruelty could possibly be involved?
In fact, bees are manipulated in similar ways to other farmed animals to provide a whole range of products, including honey, beeswax, propolis, bee pollen, royal jelly and venom.A honeybee will, on average, fly around 800km in her working life, and produce half a teaspoon of honey.
The major welfare problems associated with bee keeping are centred around the egg-laying process. The queen is routinely artificially inseminated by sperm from decapitated male bees (they would normally mate in flight). She is usually killed after two years, when her egg-layingabilities begin to decline, and replaced by a new queen, often purchased by mail order from specialist breeding companies. The queens' wings are often clipped to force the hives to remain in a single location.
Honey, stored by the bees for the lean winter months, is removed for human use and replaced with nutrient-deficient glucose orcorn syrup. Whole colonies of bees may be killed to save feeding them during the winter. Synthetic pesticides and antibiotics are also used as commercial bee colonies are prone to the rapid spread of disease, an example being the Varroa mite.
The farming of bees puts pressure on wild bees and other pollinating insects, and decreases biodiversity.
MOTHS AND SILK
The most common species of silkworm (moth larvae) used in commercial silk production, Bombyx mori, has been 'cultivated' over many centuries and no longer exists in the wild. The female annually lays 300-400 eggs on mulberry trees, secreting a sticky substance to fasten them to the surface. The eggs hatch into silkworms, which feed on the mulberry leaves and grow rapidly.
The fully grown silkworm sectrtes a fine thread to make a cocoon around itself consisting of about 300,000 figure-0f-eight movements. The pupa stage would then be followed by the production of an alkaline substance which breaks the threads, allowing the moth to emerge. But as the industry requires the threads intact, the pupa is killed by immersion of the cocoon in boiling water, steaming, oven drying, or exposure to the hot sun. The cocoons are unwound onto reels in a continuous strand.