What's the BUZZ all about?

    Many people understand the cruelty involved in factory "farming" and are morally opposed to it.. but find the honeybee not to be so much of an ethical concern. Who are these honeybees? What's the big gripe in sharing their honey while giving them free access to billions of flowers, full of nectar they like to collect?
    Beekeeping is a big business.. 15-30 percent of all food crops depend on bees for pollination. Like all factory farming, beekeeping has morphed into an industrial process.. wiping out animal concerns, and focusing only on profits. Beekeeper's commercial trucks leave  2.4 million hives all over the country to track seasonal crops. These journeys clobber the bees with psychological distress, pesticides, diseases, and related disorders. Even small outfits and hobbyists subject their bees to cruelty, such as cutting off the queen's wings so that she cannot swarm or "smoking" the bees so they become disoriented and cannot fly properly.. Honeybees are though to have originated in the tropics; winter mortality in temperate zones remain a serious issue. And recently, colonies across the world have been decimated be colony collapse disorder, which is a result of the abuse we have put upon these amazing creatures. The range of pesticides, fungicides, and invasive procedures it takes to make bee hives profitable is staggering, and it not yet clear what combination of these offenses is exterminating so many bees.
    I am so sick of hearing that a bee is just an insect. Who cares - the crops are pollinated and there is honey on the table! How else could we pollinate all those plants anyway? There are actually twenty to thirty thousand other native bee species who are quite up to the task, without factory farming them. We have to stop destroying the ecological system so we can let nature take it's course.
    Honeybees are known for their sophisticated cognitive features. They process large amounts of information about locations, flowers, weather, seasons, ages, and behavior and psychological status of bees in the hive. Young worker bees progress through a series of nest-keeping chores before graduating to the task of foraging for nectar outside the hive. Consider that the decisions of a foraging bee makes as he or she visits different places and flowers on a trip from the nest. Hmmm, where are the best flowers in relation to the hive? Which flower should I visit next? How to harvest the nectar from this particular flower? How long should I stay in this area? Where should I go next? How much should I load up before I return to the hive? What direction is the hive from here? How far away is it?
    When they do find good flowers, bees advertise them to everyone else in the hive with their famous waggle dance. They use landmarks to guide their flights when in route. They recall their surroundings and remember visual images. For years, researchers have thought that honeybees much have some sort of cognitive map.. a mental representation of local geography.. to navigate by, because their bearings and routes to and from the nest are so accurate and precise. Bottom line - the mental life of bees include decision-making that indicates conscious awareness if performed by vertebrate animals. Honeybees change their minds when conditions change. When looking for a new nest location, scouts report back to the hive and spread the word. The scouts will then visit the sites recommended by others, and if they feel certain about the new choice, they change their vote and spread the word more.
    In turn, of course h9oney bees suffer as a result of agricultural manipulation. Whether or not they are aware of the insults we inflict on them, they are VERY alive and engaging that I could never kill one just for the Hell of it or for some honey. Nor could I invade their nests, cut off their wings, relocate them, or subject them to toxic pesticides, infections, environmental stress, and the rest of the beekeeping bestows upon them. Could you? Live and let others live. Be free and let allow others to live. That's why I don't eat honey and neither should you.