Eli5 Why is it ok that bees are dwindling but I constantly see posts of people taking and eating their honey, don’t the bees need the honey for something? Isn’t it time we just left them alone?

Question

As above says I subscribe to a lot of gardening groups and I see dozens of posts of people cutting into honey as self proclaimed ‘satisfying’ posts. Bees don’t eat honey I know but they make it for a reason right? They’re on the downward slope of endangerment and their lifespans are shrinking too.

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Answer 1

People also help domesticated bees get ahead by providing them beeswax foundation sheets on the hive frames. So we cut out a step they would need to do which gives them more time to make honey. And most bee hives have super and brood compartments.

The brood compartments are reserved for the bees to raise new bees and consume for themselves, we do not take honey from these boxes since they would contain things like eggs and larva. The supers contain the extra honey.

The supers are separated from the brood by a screen large enough to allow worker bees to pass but too small for the queen bee to get through (that’s why there’s no eggs or larva in the cells around the honey we take).