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

We only eat the honey of a very small subsection of bees.

Those domesticated types of bees produce a lot of honey. Way more than they actually need. The bee keepers “steal” their bees’ honey but the bees are overproducing so much, it doesn’t matter to them.

Also, even if you take too much honey from the bees, a bee keeper would simply give some honey back or give the bees sugar water.

Also: Domesticated honey bees aren’t really endangered at all. It’s only wild non-domesticated bees that have problems (which is bad because they have to pollinate flowers for us to live).