Comments on: MMWS: Day 2 – Honey and Fruit http://www.urbanhayseed.com/2009/10/06/mmws-day-2-honey-and-fruit/ Backyard farming: organic gardening, chickens, bees, compost, and cooking. Mon, 09 Aug 2010 21:27:22 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.3 hourly 1 By: Rian http://www.urbanhayseed.com/2009/10/06/mmws-day-2-honey-and-fruit/comment-page-1/#comment-967 Rian Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:53:45 +0000 http://www.urbanhayseed.com/?p=1129#comment-967 They are. I almost didn't get them when I realized that they were vegan, which is a philosophy that I just can't get my arms around, and I'm a hippie. I read a great article the other day about how honey's not vegan because of the enslaved bees. The human makes the choices instead of, according to this article, the queen, who... apparently... makes those, or any, decisions in this person's understanding of the world. Let's forget for a second that the queen is, if anything, the slave of the hive. When they've decided she's not doing her thing to their liking, they raise a replacement and "ball" her. In this case, that translates, effectively, into dog-piling on her and cooking her with their collective body heat. AND SHE'S THEIR MOTHER!!! So ungrateful. After all she's done for them. I am no fan of the industrial beekeeping industry any more than I am of feedlots, but humans have been eating honey since pre-history. There are millenia-old cave paintings of beekeeping in France, Spain, and Africa showing people harvesting honey, and in one case, falling off the ladder doing so (my people). I'm not sure what to think of someone arbitrarily deciding that the very act of eating something that man has eaten since time immemorial is immoral because of an anthropomorphized misunderstanding of how the world works. And, yet, those cookies are pretty good. Just another of life's impenetrable mysteries. Go figure. They are. I almost didn’t get them when I realized that they were vegan, which is a philosophy that I just can’t get my arms around, and I’m a hippie. I read a great article the other day about how honey’s not vegan because of the enslaved bees. The human makes the choices instead of, according to this article, the queen, who… apparently… makes those, or any, decisions in this person’s understanding of the world.

Let’s forget for a second that the queen is, if anything, the slave of the hive. When they’ve decided she’s not doing her thing to their liking, they raise a replacement and “ball” her. In this case, that translates, effectively, into dog-piling on her and cooking her with their collective body heat. AND SHE’S THEIR MOTHER!!! So ungrateful. After all she’s done for them.

I am no fan of the industrial beekeeping industry any more than I am of feedlots, but humans have been eating honey since pre-history. There are millenia-old cave paintings of beekeeping in France, Spain, and Africa showing people harvesting honey, and in one case, falling off the ladder doing so (my people). I’m not sure what to think of someone arbitrarily deciding that the very act of eating something that man has eaten since time immemorial is immoral because of an anthropomorphized misunderstanding of how the world works.

And, yet, those cookies are pretty good. Just another of life’s impenetrable mysteries. Go figure.

]]> By: Farmer Jen http://www.urbanhayseed.com/2009/10/06/mmws-day-2-honey-and-fruit/comment-page-1/#comment-966 Farmer Jen Wed, 07 Oct 2009 18:09:49 +0000 http://www.urbanhayseed.com/?p=1129#comment-966 Those Druid Circles are yummy. Your bee knowledge is impressive. Those Druid Circles are yummy. Your bee knowledge is impressive.

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