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| ▲ | bregma 5 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| Honeybees are domestic animals that have been selectively bred over millennia to overproduce. It's like dairy cows. If a dairy cow produced that much milk naturally, either her udders or her calf would explode. The rest I can agree with. |
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| ▲ | watwut 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | That is not true. If they have a lot of honey, they make new queen and later hive, basically. The issue you talk about just dont exist. They are fine without us, we regulate their reproduction for our own benefit. | |
| ▲ | yesfitz 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I don't remember my hives overflowing or bees exploding when I didn't harvest the honey. | | |
| ▲ | e44858 4 days ago | parent [-] | | My bees would swarm if they filled up the hive and had no space to put more honey or brood. | | |
| ▲ | yesfitz 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Just like bees in the wild, otherwise they'd never make new colonies. |
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| ▲ | NoMoreNicksLeft 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Protection from predators and (as best can be managed) from disease. Supplemental food when foraged resources are insufficient. Protection from extreme weather. We spend millions of dollars researching how to combat bee diseases. They've been glorified since antiquity (go look up all the old manuscripts where they've illustrated people dressing up like bees). Nothing weird about it even if it is a fantasy. Humanity likes the honey bee. >It's not a deal. We will spend fortunes and invent new science to prevent their extinction. Whether they understand it or not, they grabbed a real bargain. |
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| ▲ | watwut 4 days ago | parent [-] | | > Supplemental food when foraged resources are insufficient. Foraged resources are generally sufficient. We are taking away honey before winter and that is why they lack foos in winter and have to be supplemented. I mean, big threst to bees are pesticides and other human generated threats. They only reason extinction could be an issue ... are humans. |
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| ▲ | rglullis 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > at least don't make up some weird fantasy where they're happy about it. Fine, as long as you don't make up a fantasy that the bees are sentient enough to be sad about their life in an environment with significant stressors, predators or disease. |
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| ▲ | OhMeadhbh 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I agree with everything you're saying. But I am a bully who likes the taste of honey. A prisoner to desire, no doubt I will not be liberated from saṃsāra anytime soon. |
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| ▲ | close04 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Do you pay your landlord everything you'd otherwise save? A bad take. Do you get from your employer as much as the value you produce? And if you want to anthropomorphize further, how do bees pay the “rent” for the convenient hive accommodation or the access to plentiful food sources? Domestic bees are bred and encouraged in every way to produce more than they need. From being offered the necessary accommodation in a convenient way including when a hive is split, to being placed next to fields of man cultivated crops. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship for both man and bee. Unlike other man-animal relationships, the one we have with bees is on the humane, non-abusive side of the spectrum. As far as animal treatment goes, bees are almost on par with pets. It’s not a deal but if it were, it’s as good as it gets. Bees get as much as they can get, and give as much as they can give (never more). Any beekeeper knows this. There’s no gain from abusing a hive. |
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| ▲ | someuser2345 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > It's not a deal. They don't understand what's happening. So what? Mutualism happens all the time in nature, even if neither party is consciously aware of it. The relationship between humans and bees is very similar to the relationship between coral polyps and algae; the algae make sugars for the polyps, and polyps provide protection for the algae. |
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| ▲ | yesfitz 5 days ago | parent [-] | | I take issue with the framing of the industrial-scale farming of introduced species that outcompete native pollinators as a pact between equals. That the bees choose anything. In your comparison, neither the algae nor the polyps have the capacity to reason about or alter their arrangement. In a fair deal, both parties must be able to reason about and/or withdraw from the arrangement. If only one party is able to reason about and withdraw from an arrangement, the other party is being used. In this case, bees are tools being used. I'm not willing to say that it's a great moral evil for that reason, but bees not only don't have the capacity to understand the arrangement, they will die trying to kill to defend their honey. So my only appeal in this case is not to pretend that they choose. | | |
| ▲ | chongli 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | If only one party is able to reason about and withdraw from an arrangement, the other party is being used. This is our relationship with all other life on earth. We use plants, fungi, bacteria, and animals to survive. We've invaded every continent on the planet (including Antarctica) and like some kind of mega-beavers we've radically reshaped environments to suit ourselves, destroying habitats for some and creating new ones for others (squirrels and many species of birds seem to thrive like crazy where I live in the city, with few predators to endanger them). What survives and what doesn't survive is largely our choice. No other animal on the planet has this capacity for choice. Whether we favour one species over another or vice versa, it's our choice in either case. Many people do try to frame this as a moral choice but neglect the human side of it. Making real change to help wildlife requires scaling back human society, reducing food production, reducing housing and other infrastructure. | |
| ▲ | vintermann 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Well, it's not exactly their honey, because they have no notion of property or propriety. They'll just as soon die trying to kill to take your sugary snack. If they don't have the capacity for considering themselves wronged, and won't get it, can you really wrong them? Are there really even two parties here? Now it may still be wrong for other reasons to keep bees, like destroying nature by wiping out native pollinators etc. | | |
| ▲ | watwut 4 days ago | parent [-] | | I dont think keeping bees is morally wrong. I eat meat too and some animal had to die for that. But I do think that comment up thread trying to frame it as some service to them or "sweet deal" is ridiculous. It reminds me when management/politicians make chances strictly for own benefit and puts out manipulative memo trying to make the situation sound as anything but that. It is ok to use bees for honey. We dont do it for bees and they are not getting all that much value from that. |
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| ▲ | stavros 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| What do they do with all the honey? Is there any downside to us taking it? I don't know anything about bees. |
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| ▲ | cryptonector 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | They use the honey for: - feeding themselves during the summer dearth - feeding themselves during the winter - to feed themselves in an emergency (think forest fires) - to feed a large portion of them who will leave the hive due to lack of space and/or to reproduce the hive (swarming) - to feed the whole hive ahead of abandoning it due to lack of space (absconding) Honeybees have two stomachs, one that is basically a bag in which they can carry nectar (and honey) which they can deliver into comb cells and to feed larvae and the queen (who is too busy to feed herself), and one that they digest in and which they can't vomit up from. When they swarm/abscond they gorge themselves, filling both stomachs, and fly off with the queen to a new place, then they use all that stored up honey to make new comb in which to start making honey and new bees. Feral honeybees need every drop of honey they make. Domesticated honeybees -which are the same as feral honeybees, just in captivity- overproduce only because the beekeeper will manage their desire for space and reproduction so as to make them need much less of the honey they make, and therefore they have a large surplus that the beekeeper takes. (Well, not all beekeepers produce honey. Some of them also or instead produce queens, nucs, hives, and/or propolis.) | |
| ▲ | afandian 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | They use it to keep warm and alive over winter. Or a cold or dry patch. A weekend of torrential rain can put a dent in the honey stores. Beekeepers typically replace it with sugar syrup which obviously lacks the nutrients they are evolved for. So you can buy sugar with additives. |
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| ▲ | card_zero 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Or unhappy about it. |
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| ▲ | yesfitz 5 days ago | parent [-] | | I can tell you that they were always angry when I opened the hives. Plenty of stingers left in my beesuit as proof. |
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