Recently my friend's commercial property had a beehive and the neighbors were going to kill the bees. We offered to house the bees in our garden. A beekeeper rescuer brought the bees over and they have thrived.
As a vegan, I always thought that humans didn't need to harvest any honey and that whatever honey bees make, that is what they will eat. This was the first time I ever cared for bees. One day the beekeeper came over and brought to me a lot of honey comb. He said the bees needed space. I have no experience in this field and I couldn't argue with him. Suddenly I have pounds and pounds of honey comb. Almost everyday, I put out a plate of honey water for the bees. I noticed that bees like to drink water, as I sometimes see them drinking water from a shallow crevice of our pond. The bees love the honey water. I learned never to put out straight honey, because they can get stuck in the honey.
I have only experimented with one tray. I let the honey drip out of the comb through a sieve. Then when the honey comb wax was mostly empty, I put it outside for the bees. They loved it. THe parts of the wax that was not bent and was straight, the bees cleaned perfectly and the wax was almost a bright beige white. THe wax that was bent was cleaned to a degree by the bees but was too merged with the honey, so the wax is more of a brown color.
What do you guys think about all this? I truly have been a vegan for years and the only times I used honey was to make a special comfrey poultice for external use on people and I had one formula that called for honey as a preservative. But now I ended up consuming a tiny amount, because the honey has been rather messy.
My friend was called again and there is yet one more hive that needs rescuing or it will be killed.
I have held the opinion that animal foods are dirty, including honey. To avoid disease as much as possible, animal foods should be avoided. It all comes down to disease transmission from animals to humans. This has been my understanding. Do you generally agree? Ironically, I was at the Cancer Control Society convention this month and I bought a book on how people in South AMerica have cured cancer with a particular variety of aloe vera and honey. I want to look deeper into this, because it would be interesting to see if the same results could be had without the honey, such as with fruit.
I am reaching out to you because I want to know what vegans do with rescued bees, and what do they do when the box is crammed with honey and the beekeeper says they need more space and that some honey must be harvested.