Again, you donât seem to be getting this.Â
Yes. You can keep bees without taking honey from them. But, as I said before, youâre ALREADY in the hive checking for diseases and pests. That, if anything, is what causes bees stress, not you taking a frame or two of honey (each frame of honey can hold 15 pounds!).Â
Also, thereâs a REASON you take honey from bees, not just because you want to eat it.Â
See, like I said before, bees will store as much honey as they can. Itâs instinctive. However, thereâs only so much room in a hive to put stuff, and honey isnât the only thing in a hive. They also need room to raise brood, store pollen, ect. Now, if they run out of room, theyâll start feeling overcrowded, which will trigger swarming activity. You can, of course, add more supers (boxes) to the hive, but thereâs a limit on how many workers one queen can produce, and you donât want more supers than they can police, even if all of them are stuffed full of honey. That way lies pests and raiding. So, what we want to do is make sure that they donât feel overcrowded, while making sure that they donât have more room than they can take care of.Â
When bees feel overcrowded, they swarm. When they swarm, they raise a new queen. The old queen and half the bees will then leave to try and find someplace to start a new hive. 90% of swarms die. As a beekeeper, you donât want this.Â
You can, of course, purposefully let them start raising a new queen and then split a new hive off of the old one if you want to. Iâve done this myself. But this is not always desirable, for many reasons (no more room for more hives, canât take care of more, donât have a spare hive body on hand, ect.) Thereâs also the fact that a recently swarmed hive is susceptible to raiding by wasps/skunks (skunks LOVE to raid hives, the little bastards) or mice, as half the bees that would have defended it before are now gone. You donât want this either; raiding can kill a hive as quick as disease or pests. (This is why I keep a VERY close eye on any hives that Iâve recently split, and have taken potshots at skunks in the backyard with a slingshot before. Not to kill them, just to scare them off.)
If you donât want them to swarm, the easiest way to keep them from feeling cramped and give them a little new breathing room is to pull a few surplus honey frames theyâve filled up and replace them with empty frames. The girls will then happily go back to work filling the new empty frames with honey or brood or whatever they decide needs to go in all that new space. They donât feel crowded any longer, the hive doesnât swarm and stays strong, everyoneâs happy.Â
And what, then, am I supposed to do with these three frames of honey I pulled? Throw them away? Hell no. Thatâs 30-40 pounds of delicious, right there.Â
Humans and bees have whatâs called a symbiotic relationship. We both benefit from the arrangement. Donât diss things if you donât understand how they work.Â
And, one more timeâŠkeeping bees is necessary for your vegan diet to remain viable. A beekeeper is going to inspect all of those hives anyway, which is the most stressful part of beekeeping for the bees. You are, with your eating habits, (and by that I mean âreally just eatingâ, because thereâs NO diet that doesnât rely on beekeeping) reliant on this practice. Taking a frame or two of honey is the LEAST stressful part of inspecting a hive for the bees.Â
Source; have kept bees organically for 10 years, help other hobbyists in the area who want to start keeping bees. Garden organically. Generally Actually Know Where My Food Comes From And What It Takes To Get It On My Plate.Â
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