South London Beers: Reboot - Last Thursday of the Month at The Prince Regent, Herne Hill, SE24

This new and important news just in! Discovered
a dairy free baileys. It's called Triibe, which is
dumb, but I'm still excited. Yeah!

Contains honey and royal jelly.

Contains honey and royal jelly.

Produced by bees- surely you cannot have a moral objection to raising bees?!

@corny - this is the light I mentioned;

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.12060

$35 and 900 lumens. Bright, bright times!

Produced by bees- surely you cannot have a moral objection to raising bees?!

I do. They're perfectly capable of rubbing along by themselves. Beekeeping by humans quite often results in whole colonies being killed, for instance to stop the spread of disease, which is transmitted more easily by intensive bee-keeping. It's essentially a form of cruel intensive farming.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/aug/24/honeybee-deaths

The association also believes beekeepers took more care to feed colonies where necessary to prevent them starving.
'Feed colonies', when they're proverbially busy all summer to collect nectar and make honey for the winter--I find 'replacing' the honey with inferior and inadequate food quite perverse and objectionable, even if it's 'only' bees--insects that aren't very similar to us and therefore less likely to evoke moral feelings than the mistreatment of, say, a Great Ape.

I've always loved bees--I find them fascinating and beautiful, and I really would rather we left them alone. I can fully understand people farming them in poorer times and places, but there is really no justification for that any more given what we know and can do now. If we came to rely on naturally-occurring and spreading bee colonies again, this would also require a major change back to a more natural landscape, away from the artificial biodiversity deserts that cover a lot of western countries (and vice versa--a change back to a more natural landscape would require more natural bee population patterns).

The Vegan Society have a leaflet, but I don't actually think it's that good--it provides some more information, though.

http://www.vegansociety.com/uploadedFiles/References_and_Resources/Downloads/Honey.pdf

What is the current split between wild bee colonies and farmed bees?

i.e. if we banned the immoral and perverse practice of bee husbandry tomorrow (presumably leading to the liquidation of the existing bee population) how many bees would we have left?

Anyone have a good number for crazy james? He sent me one, but it doesn't seem to work and he offered to help me move my cat.

BTW, thanks for telling me, Oliver, but I do feel a bit like me parade has been rained upon.

Surely there are no 'rules' for avoidance of animal products... you must draw the line wherever you feel it ought to lie? (what I am saying is, if you want to eat honey, you can, right? And still bee (sorry) a Vegan who avoids all flesh and other farmed animal products such as dairy?)

Otherwise, I would suggest, Nhatt, that you drink Whiskey and miss out all that sugar and icky stuff that goes with it to make triibe/baileys. In fact, I should invite you around sometime... when are you moving?

Last night I got on my bike, intending on riding to souths... felt the chill, and just rode home instead...

Would have been nice to see the long lost GrowUp. And the rest who braved it. And meet clefty for a present! Damn.

BTW, thanks for telling me, Oliver, but I do feel a bit like me parade has been rained upon.

Sorry, Nhatt, I just looked up the web-site when I saw your post and spotted that. Bee products are among the most easily replaceable with other products, as well.

What is the current split between wild bee colonies and farmed bees?

No idea.

i.e. if we banned the immoral and perverse practice of bee husbandry tomorrow (presumably leading to the liquidation of the existing bee population) how many bees would we have left?

Neil, changes like this are never going to occur so suddenly. The change you describe would of course be too radical. For starters, consumer demand for honey isn't simply going to go away--it will need to happen more gradually, and is a matter of personal choice.

As far as I know, you could place existing bee colonies evenly spread in the wild and most would survive, but as I say, as the fate of bees is so linked to how we manage the land, bigger changes need to occur in the background. Much of it is simply about a return to better farming practices.

Where would you get honey?

Yeah Maple syrup! Totally sustainable and non-intensive!

Vegans don't eat honey cos of the suffering some bee's may go through!? :-$

this country(said in Partridge voice)

Surely there are no 'rules' for avoidance of animal products... you must draw the line wherever you feel it ought to lie?

The idea of having moral principles, rules or maxims is that you give those to yourself--we have that ability, and also that restriction, i.e. I would argue that it isn't possible to act genuinely morally unless you had decided to do so yourself. You can of course use information and advice to inform your decisions, but you still need to determine your own will.

(what I am saying is, if you want to eat honey, you can, right? And still bee (sorry) a Vegan who avoids all flesh and other farmed animal products such as dairy?)

Nutritional veganism is defined in relation to all animal products, including honey or silk. The justification for worrying about those isn't as immediately apparent to most people, but I always say that it's best to take it one step at a time--if you can see the cruelty in meat production and want to act on that, do that first, but don't tell yourself to stop right there. In time, you may find that you see the problem with eggs or dairy, as for instance, animal exploitation industries are all connected, or eventually even with wool or silk.

Or you may be particularly concerned with experimentation on animals--most people are most immediately concerned with experimentation onapes and monkeys, as they're more similar to us than rats, and when you get to other creatures even less similar to us, most people wouldn't bat an eyelid at first. Even if the creature concerned is very dissimilar, I find it incredibly interesting to think about what the life of an animal really is and to focus on those similarities, however small, that do exist.

Where would you get honey?

You wouldn't, Niall. You know, it'll be a bit like when we take over the rules for what bikes people are allowed to have and all geared bikes will go to the scrapheap.

Surely there are no 'rules' for avoidance of animal products... you must draw the line wherever you feel it ought to lie? (what I am saying is, if you want to eat honey, you can, right? And still bee (sorry) a Vegan who avoids all flesh and other farmed animal products such as dairy?)

Otherwise, I would suggest, Nhatt, that you drink Whiskey and miss out all that sugar and icky stuff that goes with it to make triibe/baileys. In fact, I should invite you around sometime... when are you moving?

Now! James is comeing to get me and the cat at 2.

It's true, you do what you feel is most right as a humane, not just so that you can refer to yourself as a vegan. My husband has a bee farmer on his garden, and I do eat their honey because I've met him and the bees and I'm satisfied that they are happy.

I LOVE whiskey, but it would be nice to have some sort of creamy baileys drink for this weather.

You wouldn't, Niall. You know, it'll be a bit like when we take over the rules for what bikes people are allowed to have and all geared bikes will go to the scrapheap.

You are insane and wrong. You're never taking my hub gears!

Sorry Oliver but your ethical position would seem to lead (no matter that it would be a slow progression as you say) to a veritable holocaust for all animal life currently farmed by humans.

How do you reconcile your stated desire for us to stop farming animals with the loss of said animals from our environment?

To take your side it's a little like people earning £0.50 per week making trainers for Nike- your answer is too stop Nike being able to exploit them.

The workers would probably like more money rather than Nike having to fire them.

A strained analogy, but you may see what I mean.

Dammit, many of the animals that we are farming aren't really what they used to be, so to speak. Yes, cattle would disapear (I wouldn't say holocaust, that is more what is happening now, hopefully at a low rate as they die off on there own), as would any other animal that is basically a major adaptation from what it was when it was wild. I don't think this is a bad thing, farming isn't exactly good for the environment.
We would still have rabbits and ducks and bees, these are things that exist seperate from humans anyways.

To take your side it's a little like people earning £0.50 per week making trainers for Nike- your answer is too stop Nike being able to exploit them.

The workers would probably like more money rather than Nike having to fire them.

A strained analogy, but you may see what I mean.

Very strained.
Nike workers aren't being killed for their meat, they are working to support a family.

If we stopped the production of livestock for meat, I don't think anyone would let the entire species die out, but if farmers did kill off there un-profitable live stock, it wouldn't be any different than what is happening now, only now they would be killed all at once rather than a few hundred at a time.

They would not die off on their own though would they?

They'd be stacked in the fields doused with Diesel 24 hours after raising them was banned, it would make the foot and mouth crisis look like a tickling contest, from the perspective of the cows at least.

Also you seem to be viewing "natural" animals as "better" than the domestic variety- i.e. it is ok for all domestic animals to die as we then have rabbits etc which are in some way inherently "right"?

Not "better" in any sense except that they are not as hard on the environment.