Again, you donāt seem to be getting this.Ā
Yes. You can keep bees without taking honey from them. But, as I said before, youāre 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!).Ā
Also, thereās a REASON you take honey from bees, not just because you want to eat it.Ā
See, like I said before, bees will store as much honey as they can. Itās instinctive. However, thereās only so much room in a hive to put stuff, and honey isnāt the only thing in a hive. They also need room to raise brood, store pollen, ect. Now, if they run out of room, theyāll start feeling overcrowded, which will trigger swarming activity. You can, of course, add more supers (boxes) to the hive, but thereās a limit on how many workers one queen can produce, and you donāt 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 donāt feel overcrowded, while making sure that they donāt have more room than they can take care of.Ā
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 donāt want this.Ā
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. Iāve done this myself. But this is not always desirable, for many reasons (no more room for more hives, canāt take care of more, donāt have a spare hive body on hand, ect.) Thereās 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 donāt 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 Iāve 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 donāt 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 theyāve 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 donāt feel crowded any longer, the hive doesnāt swarm and stays strong, everyoneās happy.Ā
And what, then, am I supposed to do with these three frames of honey I pulled? Throw them away? Hell no. Thatās 30-40 pounds of delicious, right there.Ā
Humans and bees have whatās called a symbiotic relationship. We both benefit from the arrangement. Donāt diss things if you donāt understand how they work.Ā
And, one more timeā¦keeping 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 āreally just eatingā, because thereās NO diet that doesnāt 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.Ā
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.Ā
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