Besides the fact that we don’t “need” to.
Honey comes from bees. Bees are tiny creatures who play a huge role in keeping our planet alive and healthy, I’ll explain how.
Bees are born in beehives, where they grow up, work together, and take care of each other. While most people think bees are just busy flying around, they’re not! They actually have specific “jobs”, or tasks if you will. In fact, each bee has a specific role: some clean the hive, some feed the baby bees, and others go out to find food. Basically, they’re like us, except more advanced, because they don’t pollute, fight over nonsense and hate each other for no reason.
Bees are also pollinators.
When bees buzz from one flower to the next, they’re doing something extremely important known as pollination. Here’s how it works: As bees collect nectar for making honey, they carry pollen from flower to flower. This simple act helps plants grow fruits, veggies, seeds, and even more flowers. Without bees doing their thing, a lot of the food we rely on wouldn’t exist.
Let that sink in for a second.
Case in point, 75% of the food we eat depends on pollinators like bees (WEF). 75 freakin’ percent! Apples, strawberries, cucumbers, almonds, and even coffee all need pollination. So, losing bees would mean most of these foods would disappear, or become extremely rare and expensive.
Besides, pollinators also help plants that grow in the wild. These plants give food and shelter to animals and help keep the air clean. So, pollinators help whole ecosystems survive, not just farms and gardens.
While bees are the most famous pollinators, they’re not the only ones. Butterflies, hummingbirds, bats, moths, beetles, and even some types of ants and wasps also help pollinate plants. However, bees are the most effective because they focus their energy on flowers and carry lots of pollen.
This year (2025), we’ve had the worst honeybee loss in recorded history in the US. In fact, 80% of honeybees died suddenly. We still “don’t know” why (pesticides, it’s pesticides).
So, why don’t we eat honey? Simple: bees make honey to feed themselves and keep their hive alive, especially through the winter. When humans harvest honey, they’re taking away the bees’ own food (and heat) source. To make up for it, beekeepers sometimes replace the honey with sugar water, but that doesn’t give bees the nutrients they need to stay healthy. In fact, just like in humans, too much sugar can weaken their immune systems and make them more vulnerable to disease.
Worse still, to harvest honey, beekeepers often use smoke or chemical fumes to force bees out of their hives. This disorients them, causing stress, panic, and confusion, sometimes even leading them to get lost or die as they flee.
Even though it might not seem harmful at first, stealing honey puts a lot of pressure on bee colonies. It is in fact one of the reasons we’ve seen millions of bees die in recent years.
This is why many vegans consider honey as part of animal exploitation. The more we take from bees and damage their homes, the fewer bees we have, which in turn puts entire ecosystems, and our own food systems, at risk. In numbers, honeybees pollinate a worth of 15 billion dollars of crops in the US only, yearly.
If bees disappear, many plants won’t be pollinated. This means fewer fruits, vegetables, and nuts. Animal species that eat these plants will struggle, and so will the animals that eat them. It’s a chain reaction that could cause entire ecosystems to collapse. Eventually, the extermination of bees would entail food shortages even for us, humans, and thus our death as well.
Humans have long seen themselves as sitting at the top of the pyramid, a concept known as speciesism, but in reality, we’re just one part of a vast, interconnected family of living, sentient beings.
Fascinating facts about bees
Here’s where things get interesting: Plants, being rooted in the ground, carry a small negative electric charge. Interestingly, this charge increases the higher up the plant you go, creating an electric field around the flower itself.
Bees, in contrast, acquire a positive charge during flight due to friction with the air, which causes them to lose electrons. So, as a bee approaches a flower, the opposing electric fields of the bee and the plant begin to interact. This interaction subtly changes the flower’s natural vibrations or signals, imperceptible to humans, but detectable to bees.
When the bee lands on the flower, the positive charge from the bee and the negative charge of the flower neutralize each other almost instantly. This leads to two remarkable outcomes:
- The negatively charged pollen from the flower is attracted to and effectively “jumps” onto the positively charged bee;
- The flower’s electric field is altered, signaling to other approaching bees that it has already been visited. This change communicates that the flower likely has no nectar left, prompting bees to move on and return later. Mindblowing!
So, flowers use electric fields not just to attract pollinators, but also to communicate whether they still have nectar. They have their own language of electricity, completely imperceptible to us.
Other interesting facts about bees: They can also recognize human faces, communicate with each other through a little dance, and even show signs of emotion. Scientists also suggest bees can count and they might even dream.
What can we do to protect the bees and our soils?
- Ban pesticides.
- Plant flowers that bees love, like lavender, sunflowers and wildflowers.
- Replace honey with the million other alternatives in existence: maple syrup, agave nectar, date syrup, molasses, and even fruit-based syrups work great. Why participate in the extinction of a whole species (and many other would follow suite) when you can avoid it?
Bees may be small, but they are mighty. Taking care of them is not just about saving one species, it’s about saving the world we all share.
Thank you for stopping by. This post was inspired by a conversation with my wife ❤
Peace!
Teekay
Teekay Rezeau-Merah 