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bee farmers. The bees swallow nectar into their crop, regurgitate it, add enzymes in their saliva), chew, swallow, and repeat many times. This is neither a pretty nor appetizing picture. In the course of cultivating repeated hives, humans select a successor queen instead of allowing the reigning queen to continue. Both of these are likely to have been artificially inseminated. Beekeepers replace the queen every two years, instead of allowing her to live out her natural life and reign. “Replace” is a euphemism for killing the old queen. Backyard beekeepers also regularly kill their queens. This is done for numerous reasons that all boil down to exerting control over the hive. For example, it is done to prevent swarming, aggression, mite infestation, and to keep honey production at a maximum. For backyard or small-scale beekeepers, queens come from commercial queen suppliers and during their shipment, nearly anything can happen. Queens can be over heated, chilled, left out in the sun for hours (desiccated), banged about, and killed. There is often a lack of regard for the bees' lives. In the US, 10 to 20 percent of colonies are lost over the winter. This is partly by accident and partly on purpose. Some beekeepers kill off their hives before winter. This practice can make economic sense. Unfortunately, this is not done by the small backyard beekeeper, but rather by the large factory bee farmer, so a lot of bees are killed even if most beekeepers don't use the practice. Also, in the process of checking up on the hive and taking the honey, some bees get squashed by the farmers or stepped on. Bees who sting the keeper in defense of their home necessarily die. If two colonies are combined, the queen of the weaker colony is killed. So that the honey can be easily removed from the comb, it is often warmed prior to removal. In the warming room, bees find themselves trapped with no escape, and either die naturally or are “disposed” of by beekeepers. There is no doubt that beekeeping, like dairy farming, is cruel and exploitative. The bees are forced to construct their honeycombs in racks of trays, according to a human-made
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An Ahimsa Crisis: You Decide
