My thoughts on Honey and it's Ethical Practices

For years I have suffered from horrible allergies and no allergy medicine helped.  I was even taking allergy shots and I would still deal with horrible allergy symptoms.  My pediatrician asked me if I ate honey, I told her yeah but only the conventional stuff and she just kinda looked at me dumbfounded.  She told me because of my allergies that I should find someone local with bees who was selling honey and use it instead of the conventional honey.

Because I was a curious child I asked her why I should do that and she told me it was because one honey bee will travel about a ten mile radius from it's hive to collect pollen and nectar to make honey thus by eating the honey from these bees I would lessen the severity of my allergies.   The next week or so my mom and I spent looking for local beekeepers and we found one.  Just by switching my conventional honey for local honey and I didn't have to take my allergy shots about three weeks after making the switch because I built up the antibodies for local flora and my allergy doctor was amazed.  He asked how I did it and I told him local honey.  He began prescribing local honey to his patients and he saw a decrease in people with severe flora allergies across the board.

 Honey works for allergy sufferers but is it ethical?

Most vegans will tell you no matter what no honey is ethical because it is an animal by product but I don't feel the same way about honey because I have seen the process local beekeepers do to extract the honey from the combs.

Local beekeepers and all small bee farms use smoke to calm the bees before removing surplus combs which are stripped and then placed back for the bees to continue to produce honey.  Bees by nature will create a surplus of honey as long as they have places to build combs.  This is how they live, how their are programmed to function.  Clearing the supers to be refilled also keeps the bees healthy because they continue to work.

Now i am not sure how conventional honey is harvested but I figure, just like almost every other conventional animal by-product, is harvested in an unethical fashion.  I do not use conventional honey for anything because it has no benefits for my body.

Bee pollen?

Bee pollen is actually very ethical, on the outside of the conventional hives (the wooden boxes not the naturally made hives) are screens and collector bags.  The pollen collects on the legs of the bees in little balls of pollen and the screens brush the pollen off kinda like a hair brush and it falls into the collection bags doing no harm to the bees.  I don't even think they notice it to be honest.

The bee pollen can also help allergy suffers and is a source of B12 if eaten in it's whole food source.

So as a synopsis I do feel that local honey and bee pollen is very ethical and isn't a problem to eat because it helps allergy suffers and it isn't harming the bees but please make sure it is local if you are going to eat it.

As always thanks for reading and you all are awesome!  Have a great day till I talk to you next!