Bees choose to live in the box where they know damn well that a large fraction of the honey will periodically be removed, instead of simply leaving that place like they are perfectly able to do, because the human box comes with an invulnerable titan to guard them against all threats. The bees consider the payment offered to this colossal mercenary to be a pretty good deal.
Bees know about supply and demand
Protection money
Protection honey
If you think this is a vegan issue: People go out and kidnap queens and scrape the bees into a box with her while stepping on/crushing the ones that fall down. When they want "royal jelly" they use bee pheromones and a baby girl bee to get the workers to produce it. Then they crush the baby girl to death and take the royal honey. The honey they replace with sugar water has healing properties. Because they take the honey and make the bees sick by overcrowding them (the bees only know to stay with their queen, they literally can't leave. The queen literally cant leave either, she thinks she's in her home), they have to give the bees very strong antibiotics instead. This makes for some very sick bees who then spread disease to rare and endangered species of bee and make them go extinct.
Here's why this isn't a vegan issue, it's an environmental issue: honey bees are rented out as pollinators for big agriculture, you know, the guys who love their pesticides and destroy the environment and local pollinators and plants for money, just like the animal industry does. These travelling, sick, rented bees are NOT specialized for the many rare, endangered, important local flowers and plants that they try to pollinate as they pass through, damaging and even killing the plant, and taking from rare local pollinators and endangered bees. And leaving catchy disease for them as well, super-disease created by insane levels of antibiotics and environmental destruction (covid, anyone?), again, killing rare bees (who are ADORABLE by the way).
And when these specialized pollinators die, their rare plants die too, and vice versa. It sets off a change of destruction and extinction that could very well be irreversible. What about the little endangered shrew who needs the endangered plant? What about the little fox who eats the shrew when times get hard, to survive? When there's nothing else to eat? Every little life is important to each ecosystem, and they're all intricate and different and magnificent in their own way.
But don't take it from me. Please, god, don't just blindly believe randos on twitter and tumblr who say nice things that make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside about your cottagecore severe honey addiction that piglet keeps feeding. Do your own research. There are some really cute freaking bees that are endangered and you can help them by planting local plants, pulling up invasive ones, and providing them natural places for hives. And by telling people how terrible huge for-profit companies are and how much they destroy the environment. Tbh all food should be free and none of it environmentally destructive, and it is more than possible for is to make that happen. Overpopulation is a myth, the truth is there's too much pollution and money/power obsession and environmental destruction and crowded people in crowded cities that make no room for nature and wildlife, when they're very capable of tearing a few ugly buildings and ugly highways down and providing better and more dispersed (and free!) transportation and buildings that exist in harmony with nature.
So, yeah, don't just stop eating honey, tell people how terrible corporations and rich people are and crush them until there are none left. And feed the people. Everyone deserves a belly full of nutritious food when they're hungry, no one deserves to starve to death or suffer or be malnourished, full stop. And most importantly, do your own research. We have to start thinking for ourselves and questioning the status quo or it's all over.
Cute bee pics:
(Yes these are the adorable, rare, native, endangered, and extinct bees)
More adorable bee pics:
(Yes these are the adorable, rare, native, endangered, and extinct bees) (do not be a backyard beekeeper. Bees have to be in a natural healthy habitat to prevent mites and disease)
Even more adorable and beautiful bees:
(Spread the word to help protect rare native bee species and bee diversity)