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'natural', animal products, beekeeping, entanglement, ethics, exploitation, Food, honey, Human, human-animal studies, Insect, labour, political-economy, property, purification, reflexive, swarming, vegan, veganism
A more reflexive post this week. The topic of veganism can be difficult to discuss openly and analytically in human-animal studies (HAS) circles, because it excites much passion and often a certain amount of defensiveness on all sides. That’s unsurprising, as the issue is one that obviously has implications for one’s personal choices and practices, and the debate is usually such that these choices become moralised – or highlighted as ethically significant – in such a way that the customary liberal individualism we hide behind is challenged. Consequently some may feel they are being unfairly judged, whilst others may feel the need to reassert the legitimacy of their beliefs and commitments, all of which mitigates against genuinely open discussion. As a result veganism sometimes seems like a sort of silent but unenforced orthodoxy in human-animal studies, with some regarding it as a prerequisite for HAS scholars, some settling for vegetarianism as a haphazard ‘good enough’ measure, and some far less certain about the necessary connection between veganism and HAS, but tentative about expressing this in the face of the conviction of others.
Full disclosure – having formerly been a pretty ardent advocate of veganism and practicing vegan for some 9 years, I experienced… I’m not sure what to call it as all the terms are value-laden – an epiphany? an anti-epiphany? a disenchantment? In any case I am no longer vegan and although there are still some animal products I won’t eat I cannot call myself a proper vegetarian. I hope I can still claim to have some understanding of what motivates veganism and of the ethos, and I by no means reject it out of hand. Indeed I find my current position hardly more satisfactory than my earlier vegan one, but somehow I find its open messiness and ad-hocery sits easier with me. Perhaps this is underpinned by the feeling that in the world such as it is we all live ethically untenable lives, and that in some sense it is better to be fully aware of one’s living embroilment within these contradictions than to strive to exempt oneself individually, an effort that is doomed to failure but which may nevertheless succeed in creating a blinkered sense of ethical purity and an accompanying feeling of certainty. Both purity and certainty I regard with suspicion; there is no getting away from the totality of what exists. Nor would I claim that this is fully coherent; it is more of a structure of feeling.
So that’s the reflexive context (confession? disclaimer?) for what follows, which is not intended as an attack on veganism per se, which would hardly be constructive, but which does problematise what I regard as the purifying tendencies that often seem to be a significant element in some vegan discourse, and which seem to underpin some of the certainties it espouses. I explain what I mean further by discussing the – admittedly quite particular – example of honey.
Stealing Honey?
As honey is an animal product, rather than a plant-based food, it is inconsistent with an animal-free diet and most vegans do not consume it. In popular vegan discourse there are a few recurrent core reasons given for this, which begin from general arguments concerning the consumption of animal products before applying these to honey. Prominent amongst these is always the argument that honey is produced by bees for themselves, should thus be seen as their property, and that beekeeping therefore amounts to stealing honey:
“In common with other animals kept to produce food products bees are farmed and manipulated, and the honey they produce for themselves is taken from them. Vegans do not eat products taken from any animal, including bees, because it is neither desirable nor necessary to exploit animals in order to obtain food for humans.” (Vegan Society UK, 2012).
The striking thing about this is its absoluteness – it is not based primarily on an ecological or ethical critique of the problems of intensive large-scale commercial beekeeping of the sort that has contributed to the emergence of Colony Collapse Disorder, but is in essence a critique of beekeeping per se, regardless of scale and organisation. Thus an organic amateur beekeeper with a single hive, who extracts a modest quantity of surplus honey annually for sale or personal use, is no less guilty of exploitation. But there is a conceptual problem here, since ‘exploitation’, unlike cruelty or domination, is a political-economic term which rests on socio-culturally embedded systems of value and property, and is therefore not straightforwardly transferable to nonhumans.
Exploitation is centrally about unjust or unequal exchange, usually involving labour, hence exploitation can occur without necessarily being accompanied by either physical or psychological harm or suffering – slaves are exploited, but so are most contemporary wage labourers, even those with apparently favourable salaries and working conditions, since the harm is not directly to them but to their interests. Whereas for the concept to be at all meaningful in reference to nonhuman animals then either physical or psychological harm or suffering would have to be shown to be present. Thus it is really the infliction of harm or suffering that is being misnamed ‘exploitation’ in such cases. One might shift the argument by asserting that bees are indeed subjected to harm by beekeepers – this is true, in that there is always a risk of harming some bees when beekeeping, just as there is always a risk of harming some insects when gardening – but that is beside the point, as the crux of the vegan argument is that removing surplus honey in-and-of-itself harms the bees, even when sufficient honey is left to ensure that the colony has plenty for its needs. So the assertion is that even if beekeeping could be done in such a way as to ensure that absolutely no bees were harmed, the removal of honey would still constitute harm via exploitation. But this relies on the idea that the bees’ interests are being harmed in an intangible way via a relationship of unequal exchange, when there is no common socio-cultural system of value in which to ground such a view
Manipulating Nature?
Furthermore the claim is often made that the notion of ‘surplus’ honey is misleading since the bees only ‘naturally’ produce as much as they need, and a surplus is produced only when the colony is prevented by the beekeeper from dividing into another colony by swarming:
“Although beekeepers claim that bees naturally produce extra honey, this isn’t necessarily true. Bees make honey to satisfy perceived demand […] Under natural conditions, if the bees in a hive were producing a great surplus due to an increased population of bees, they would divide into two colonies and there would be none wasted. Hives are often prevented from dividing or swarming by beekeepers in order to avoid losing bees and therefore maximise honey production. If bees were left to themselves, each colony would cast one or more swarms each year.” (All American Vegan, 2013).
In this way the critique of exploitation is underpinned by the notion of ‘manipulation’, that is, human intervention into – or modification of – the natural behaviour of nonhuman animals, which is regarded as intrinsically unethical. The reasoning here is particularly problematic. For one thing it reifies the idea of ‘natural behaviour’; in other words, it treats natural behaviour as that which is ‘pure’, uninfluenced or uncontaminated by exogenous influence. But in a world made-up of complex entanglements of diverse entities and forms of life, no behaviour can meet such criteria – all behaviour is continually shaped and reshaped by myriad relations with other organisms and the changing environment, and it would be bizarre to see all this as distortion from some pre-existing and rightful ‘natural’ template; indeed, nature is precsely what constantly emerges from all these entanglements. But what really underlies the critique of ‘manipulation’ is the notion that human influence upon the behaviour of other animals is inherently harmful, so that it is specifically human influence that constitutes ‘manipulation’. This looks suspiciously like the old anthropocentric humanist idea that humanity (or ‘society’ or ‘culture’) is somehow separate from nature, since only then can any transgression of this separation amount to ‘manipulating’ the purity of nature. But humans are not separate, and nature is not pure – it is complex entanglement all the way through.
I find the vegan case against honey problematic then, insofar as it relies on an anthropomorphic misuse of the category of ‘exploitation’, as well as a notion of ‘manipulation’ that involves both an overly purifying view of ‘nature’ and an anthropocentric separation of humanity from other animals and the natural world. That is not to say that there are not other grounds for opposing beekeeping and honey production – a compelling ecological critique could be made of many of the practices associated with large-scale intensive commercial apiculture, for example. But the context-free argument that the use of animal products is unethical not in its harmful effects, which may or may not apply in any particular case, but in itself, and under all circumstances, looks like a disciplinary attempt to maintain consistency in the face of an example which does not lend itself to the vegan analysis.
© Richie Nimmo 2013.
Sociological Insect 
Dear Richie:
Interesting post! Thanks. A couple of points if I may:
1.You talk about absoluteness as being outside of an ethical critique. I would say that absoluteness is *intrinsic* to *the* ethical critique. For example, even though I won’t suffer physical harm if a young child hits me I nonetheless make it a point that he does not hit me.
2.With regards to manipulation by humans: as agents with the ability for moral reason our manipulation must be treated differently from those that have no capacity for moral reason. If I burn down the house it is different than if the young child above burns down the house.
Fair or not?
Cheers.
Thanks for the comments. Yes fair and constructive, although I don’t agree:
1. I’m not an ethicist, but I wouldn’t quite say that absoluteness is alien to ethical critique – in fact it seems to me that absoluteness is, as you say, intrinsic to ethics, or certainly intrinsic to a certain mode of ethical discourse. But this is in itself problematic, because whilst ethical argumentation may be about principles and abstractions these only come to matter in practices, and practices are irreducibly circumstantial and contingent. In other words, principles may well be absolute but these fit the complexity of the world – of practices – more or less badly. Practices are messy, and do not lend themselves to the absolute. So, to use your example, there may be many instances where it is OK for a young child to hit you, as it really depends on the motive of the child, as read in the situation – it could be that the child hits you because you have treated him/her very badly for example. Already the principle ‘do not hit others’ is revealed as too general a rule – such is the fate of all rules.
2. I am a posthumanist when it comes to these issues. I am therefore very reluctant to endorse quick and easy distinctions between humans and ‘animals’ (i.e. all the other species). There is a history of such distinctions being made in order to sustain some sense of human uniqueness, (and often to dehumanise some human group deemed to have less of the requisite faculty, such as ‘reason’), but whatever grounds the human/animal distinction is made on can be shown to be fragile. As cognitive ethologist Marc Bekoff (2004, p. xi) points out:
“When we carefully parse the criteria that have been frequently used to separate ‘us’ from ‘them’ – tool use, language, art, culture, feelings, consciousness – we find ourselves on thin ice, for none shows that we represent some sort of evolutionary discontinuity.”
I would therefore question the drawing of an absolute distinction between humans and animals on grounds of ‘moral reason’ or any other capacity. Many humans do not appear to have any such capacity, as far as I can see. And, although I am not a primatologist, I believe that several nonhuman primates have been shown to possess what could be regarded as a ‘moral’ sense. I also think it is clear that animals often have what we might want to call ‘agency’ as well, that is, they make a difference to a situation. It doesn’t really matter whether that difference is consciously intended or not, as the world is as much the product of unintended consequences as of intentional actions.
1. OK. I won’t trample here further as the usefulness (or otherwise) of rules w.r.t. ethics is itself a normative assumption and we’ll probably differ.
2. As someone who lives vegan I’m obviously not in the business of willfully and wantonly exploiting any form (or notion) of human exceptionalism. That said I’ll now appeal to your own approach in 1 above, viz., “because whilst … may be about principles and abstractions these only come to matter in practices…” I’d suggest that, as a practical matter, the fragility in the distinction between human-vs-nonhuman moral reasoning skills is not too dissimilar from the fragility in the distinction between human-vs-eagle flying skills or human-vs-fish underwater breathing skills. That is not to automatically say that other species might not have particular skills in moral reasoning, but they are about as useful to us as our flying skills are to eagles.
There’s also no doubt that we live by these distinctions every day. After all, we don’t invite the rest of animalia to join us in these discussions, nor does it appear they want to be invited.
I can’t see it as anything short of a naturalistic fallacy to dull our own (moral) obligations by an appeal to our similarity to other species. In fact, such a simplistic entanglement between their “dos” and our “oughts” renders ethics as we know it – including this post and our discussing it – altogether superfluous. Yet we’re still here!?
You make an interesting argument, and I like the comparison with capacities possessed by other species and not by ourselves. In other contexts I often make the point that to elevate the cognitive skills particular to – or characteristic of – human beings as a benchmark against which to measure other species is highly anthropocentric, and just as arbitrary as taking, say, the sonar abilities of some aquatic animals and finding ourselves wanting on that measure. However, the original point was not about human vs animal moral reasoning, if you recall, but whether human influence upon nonhuman animals and their behaviour should be seen as being ontologically distinct from the reverse. So distinct that the former could be called ‘manipulation’ and condemned, whilst the latter is seen simply as environmental influence or ‘context’.
It’s true that we do routinely think this way, but I don’t think that’s a decisive argument – racism, misogyny, torture and genocide are all routine too, and look at the world that our current ways of thinking (including ethical discourse) have produced. I would argue that the human exceptionalism embedded in this way of thinking – even in the name of ethical responsibility – is more dangerous now than what you see as the blunting of our sense of ethical obligation involved in a rejection of human/nonhuman dualism. No amount of prescriptive ethics is going to lead to the kind of change required, whereas a cultural shift in the prevailing sense of what it is to be human just might, conceivably.
No doubt this represents a view of politics as performative – a conviction that the worldview embedded in the assumptions framing my discourse is more potent than its explicit intent; that might help to explain why ethical discourse generally fails in its stated aim of changing human behaviour through reasoning, unless it is taken up by legislative agencies and turned into enforceable law. My view is that – perhaps with the exception of academics working in ethics – people’s actions are not really significantly guided by abstract moral reasoning but by structures of feeling bound up with their sense of self, their implicit worldview and their taken for granted cosmology. This might indeed render ethics superfluous, but many superfluous realms of discourse persist – I do not see free market economic theory disappearing since 2008!
Apologies for my tardiness in replying.
I don’t think that it’s contestable that someone’s worldview or sense of self informs their actions. In fact, I’d say that the entire thrust of ethical reasoning is to engage the person’s worldview and sense of self. You say that “No amount of prescriptive ethics is going to lead to the kind of change required…” but that is in itself a value judgement; what is its origin if not some type of normative ethic? (Aside: I’m also very interested in *what change* you think is required?)
My own experience, and it seems most of human history, generally concurs with your appraisal of the usefulness of prescriptive ethics at modifying human behaviour / changing worldview. The question that remains then is: what alternative is there? Even inasmuch as I know that challenging people – including academics working in ethics – to engage with their *own* moral values is not very efficacious there is yet no other “best practice” that I can think of. Can you suggest any? (You did mention enforced legislation. I’m hoping for something a little less oppressive. But maybe my hopes are too high?)
If it’s ok with you I’d love to hear more about your “anti-epiphany” – that might help elucidate your position. I’m also particularly interested if it was a gradual deconstruction or a slap-in-the-face.
I acknowledge that ethical reasoning may play a part in some people’s worldviews, but again I tend to think that people’s actions really have more to do with their sense of identity, with wanting to define themselves in a certain way, and that ethical reasoning is essentially part of this, and mostly after the fact – used to justify why one’s actions are the right ones and why one is a ‘good’ person. If prescriptive ethics is ineffective, as you acknowledge, then why do people engage in it? My answer would be that it is essentially self-referential, a form of identity work. That is fine, and we all do it, but lots of ethical positions – including veganism – do look quite different from that perspective.
I don’t think my view that ethical reasoning won’t change the world is necessarily a normative judgement, just an analytical observation.
As for the change I think is required, I’m afraid I’m deeply pessimistic, so utopian schemes are not my forte, but it’s clear to me that the continuation and acceleration of capitalist modes of social and economic organisation are leading inexorably to catastrophic climate change, severe ecological degradation, ever-widening social inequality and grotesque concentrations of wealth and power. All of those things describe our present trajectory, and short of a major civilisational collapse I do not see things changing course. In my dreams, I suppose my shopping list would consist of such things as a progressive movement towards a more egalitarian society and socialist economy, achieved via re-democratised states prepared to act to severely curtail the power of private capital and corporations, impose steep progressive taxation, bring energy, utilities, major industries and infrastructure into public ownership, oversee huge investment in renewable energy and the elimination through punitive taxation of the fossil fuel and carbon-intensive industries, institute a guaranteed citizen’s income so that paid work was no longer mandatory, abandon continuous economic growth as an objective and aim instead for a sustainable steady-state planned economy, enforce stringent statutory standards of animal welfare in farming and elsewhere, encourage the diminution of consumer culture as society becomes less in thrall to the cyclical needs of the market and the treadmill of capitalist production, etc. There’s a somewhat national focus here I realise, but my utopian dream is only so grandiose and doesn’t extend to solving global problems!
On reflection, I guess all that is not so very far from many of the policies of the UK Green Party, making me an eco-socialist, which sounds about right. Although underlying all the structural changes, the real point is that I’d like to see a cultural revaluation of what life is all about, a massive shift in priorities away from productivism and careerism and consumerism, and towards a more eco-centric existential cosmology in which we see ourselves as one animal amongst many on a rock floating in space, and live accordingly. At present it seems to me that we are increasingly competitive self-promoting self-aggrandising robots, frenetically depleting our finite resources in chasing our own tails. But that’s not solvable at an individual level, it’s embedded in every aspect of social organisation, so I have little time for sustainable ‘lifestyle’ discourse with its focus on individual consumer responsibility within a largely unchanged socio-economic structure. Again, this is really just self-referential identity work, which is fine, but nothing to be preachy about.
Something else which this probably reveals is my pessimistic/realistic view that significant change occurs only when power is countered with power, and not when power is countered by critique or reason or ethics. All those with massive interests in maintaining the status quo are never going to be persuaded, they must be forced. I reiterate that I don’t believe that any of this is going to happen; it is just wishful thinking. My eyes are open and as far as I can see our course it set.
I’d prefer not to say too much about my ‘lapse’ from veganism, beyond what I’ve already said about it, as I don’t want to get too much into a public psychoanalysis. But it was a gradual deconstruction in the background over a couple of years and then a sudden break.
It’s curious how people can have such diverse policies to arrive at generally common ends and virtues. (Take virtues as separate from and without morality if so desired). And that’s fine. What I’m very unclear about is why we – as groups and, yes, as individuals – don’t focus on those virtues themselves rather than the policies to get there. As an example, pretty much everyone thinks it right (due to ethics or otherwise) to minimise the harms they inflict on others but it seems that we usually don’t want to (or feel powerless to) do much about it except as part of a grander, usually distant, plan.
But this has morphed into something quite different from the original post! Still very interesting but probably time for me to bail. Your thoughts are extremely stimulating and appreciated. Thank you.
Well many people do focus on ‘the virtues themselves’, but in the context of current socio-economic structures they are only ever going to be a minority, faced with a juggernaut. How long can the line of reasoning ‘if everyone did this…’ last when you realise that everyone won’t?
Thanks for all your comments, I’ve very much enjoyed the discussion.
whatever your position on stealing honey, or not, or eating it or not, bees are essential to food production.
Absolutely. No bees means much lower levels of natural fertility. Although some would want to emphasise that – despite our over-reliance on them – honeybees are not the only bee, let alone the only pollinator, and that large scale commercial apiculture isn’t essential to food production as such, but only to large scale industrial agriculture as currently organised, and especially intensive monocultures. A more sustainable agriculture might imply reliance on a wider range of pollinators.
like butterflies 🙂
Yes. And various species of native bee.
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Hi there, i just encountered this post after Hal Herzog posted a link to it on Fb. And i have to say that i find this one of the most well reasoned arguments for radical diversity and acceptance that i have seen in the hum/non hum-animal debates in a long while. And one that i fundamentally agree with.
I too have learned to be cautious posting both my own personal wrestling with issues of, what you, i think call ‘purity’, and i call universalism (as in ‘everyone should or shouldn’t’) around these issues, based upon my own inconsistencies discovered through a lot of lived experience, and on my own philosophical explorations of the role and potential meanings of death and suffering in life. As you suggest, non of us get out of here ‘clean’. That we try is imperative, but the path is our own particular path, and it never seems to stop revealing new (and sometimes dismaying) things about ourselves to ourself.
Indeed, sometimes these debates seem so familiar – i heard them in the sixties (one of the great downfalls of a lot of sixties radicalism was its rigidity and authoritarianism, despite discourses of the opposite), and in the seventies when i was a macrobiotic vegetarian (the health food fascists), etc etc. And this despite Lennon singing “if you want to change the world, you better change yourself instead” such a long time ago.
It would be depressing (and i suppose, once in a while is) except that i am so fortunate to live in a world free enough that i can disagree and disengage myself enough to actually listen to my reflexive self. Over so many years, i have learned to trust myself on these issues (as we used to teach our daughter – “If it gives you a ‘no feeling’ you have to listen to that”). And any position which does not accept exceptions makes me uncomfortable. How do i know what has led you, and you, and you, to this moment? I hardly know what has led me here. So how can i condemn or judge you or you or you? The common response to this is to push the limits of the argument, but even here, i see complexity and differentiation. Someone was once talking to me about the Ruandan debacle as if the people involved in the almost-genocide were somehow not human. And i realized that as much as i abhor murder of other human beings, i could imagine myself in a situation where if you tried to kill my mother, i would kill you. It’s one thing to objectify these things in the distance, it is another when they are up close and personal.
My point is, (i hope obviously) not to condone murder of other human beings. Or, for that matter, other non-humans. But from that starting point i began to wonder about why there is death,and suffering in life. Or as the medicos say ‘morbidity and mortality’. What role do they play in this life we live? Is death and suffering immoral always? Why are they so present then? And at this (still early) point in my learning i have to say that they are immutably present, and so therefore, they are part of life. We cannot conceive of life without death. To promote living without death in it simply ignores the other side of the coin. It is a fantasy. This may be easier for someone who has lived over 2/3rds of their allotted span to say, because having lived so long causes one to contemplate one’s own death, and one’s own chronic pains. Do they diminish my life? Non. They are a marker of the passing of my youth. Do i have any more certainty? No, less.
The way i see it, veganism and the discourses that surround it, particularly in these human/non-human animal forums, is a product of a specific and particular set of relations of production which produces a culture of individuals who have the privilege and positionality to not only espouse them, but the sense of ‘rightness’ to pronounce that they are absolutely the ‘only’ way to be. Been there, done that, over many issues, and have found myself confounded time and time again.
So thank you for your (much briefer and clearer) exegesis! If it is of any consolation, it is for exactly this reason that i like Haraway’s When Species Meet so much. As the French say — D’accord!
Fascinating discussion, all–many thanks!
I don’t know that I’m really equipped to discuss this in parlance of human-animal studies. or of formal ethics; my positioning here is that of a back-yard beekeeper, with some vegetarian history, but no veganism on which to draw…so discount if you wish.
With the disclaimers disclaimed, though, I have some thoughts based on what I’ve experienced with bees.
1) Does intent or purpose of beekeeping, the WHY, matter? Though we’ve been lucky enough to harvest some honey, thanks to the good work of the bees, that’s not why we “keep” bees; we began because we were worried about pollination. If we “keep” bees (I’ll explain the scare quotes further down, with all due respect to Eddie Izzard) but don’t take their honey, is that a morally more tenable position than honey-thieving? Or, since we’re putting them in dwellings (more about this in a minute too) that are built for the convenience of the keeper rather than the bees, and to that extent disrupting what was once their wild behavior, is honey a secondary issue?
I find this one interesting, too, because there are so many other animals whose original wild behavior has been so drastically modified by living commensally with humans; dogs are only the most obvious example. I have a friend who says that domestication is original sin, maybe THE original sin–and she’s not kidding. If bees get something from the exchange (on which more in a minute), does that matter to the principle at hand? Does it matter to the ethics of domestication if the original animals exercised some participation, as dogs conceivably did but bees presumably didn’t?
2) Does HOW the bees are kept matter, ethically or morally speaking? The traditional Langstroth hive (eight or ten frames) is indeed constructed for the convenience of the keeper; it makes it very easy (well, okay, relatively easy) to work the hives, extract honey, medicate and feed, and so on; bees wouldn’t make these symmetrical frameds in the wild. However, it’s perhaps worth mentioning that the more the hive arrangement conforms to the old hollow-tree or bee-skep model, the more damage we do if we do extract honey: crushed and broken comb, honey lost, bees trapped or killed (at least for amateurs like us–I don’t know about professionals who’ve worked with hanging comb all their lives.) There are other hive varieties which more closely mimic the setup which wild bees will arrange for themselves, like Ware hives; and some evidence suggests that in these situations, bees are less stressed and do a bit better, other circumstances being equal. I’ve tried Wares, but went back to Langstroth because of the associated damage and hassle for all concerned. Morally sound choice? I don’t know.
The extreme not-like-wild end of the HOW spectrum, of course, is the gazillion-hive truck driven from field to field, the industrial model of pollination. Much evidence indicates that bees in this system are quite stressed and don’t do well And, go figure, I think this is a morally bankrupt way to treat bees. But how much it differs from my six Langstroth hives morally, as opposed to physically…well, again, I don’t know. (Also, bees are very bad at self-reporting.)
3) What about what the bees get from the hypothetical exchange of semi-domestication? They lose some honey; they generally lose some members of the collective in the collection of honey (though with such advanced techniques as shooing bees out of a closed box of honey frames every few minutes, we’ve managed to get that down to a surprising minimum); they lose the chance to build their comb as they would if they were wild (though, of course, honeybees per se aren’t native in the U.S., so “in the wild” is kind of a fraught thing to say about American bees.) In return, if you like that phrase, they get fairly weatherproof housing, human assistance against natural parasites and diseases (which arguably renders the gene pool less resilient), and feeding when times get tough. (What that means for us is that when it’s cold enough that the bees won’t break their cluster to get to ample reserves of stored honey–literally starving themselves to death trying to protect the brood–we drip syrup on them from above, so they can drink and eat without leaving the brood.) Their chances of survival (see below), ironically, are much better if they’re domesticated. Enough to make up for original sin, if you read domestication that way? I don’t know.
4) And, of course, what about that swarming? It’s true that most hives will, left to themselves, swarm at least once a year, sending about half of their number off to try somewhere else. The chances of a swarm surviving in the wild are supposed to be about one in six; if we “let” a hive swarm, we’ve collaborated in condemning it to an 84% chance of a slow and unpleasant death. if we split a large, swarm-happy hive into two, we’re doing with them what a hive on the verge of swarming is planning to do for itself anyway, with the improved chance of survival. Both hives still generally produce surplus honey; since sealed honey keeps indefinitely, it’s never a question of “waste.” They’re not trying to produce exactly as much as they’ll use in any given year, since even the bees don’t know how much that’ll be. They’re trying to produce as much as possible, and that often means enough for the beekeeper to take some and still leave more-than-ample supplies for the coming winter. So if we split the hive rather than letting it swarm, is the ethical problem that we’re interfering with what would’ve been their wild behavior, and inhibiting their choice in finding a new place in which to live (or, more likely, die in the winter)? Is it that we’re trying to “keep” bees who want to leave? For what comfort it may give, no human power will stop a hive that’s really determined to swarm–they don’t live behind bars.
Further thoughts? Do these issues matter, ethically and philosophically speaking, or are they just justifying a really expensive hobby?