Sunday Rest: beegan. Word Not To Use Today.

A beegan, of course, is a vegan who eats honey.

Why don't vegans eat honey? Well, because it's made by animals, and the feeling among vegans is that taking away the bees' honey is exploitative.

And I suppose that's true, in a way.

It's not a straightforward, though. For one thing, many industrially-produced crops, such as avocadoes, almonds, apples, plums, cherries alfalfa, blueberries, melons, cucumbers, squashes, lettuces and tangerines are pollinated by brought-in hives of bees - and plonking the poor things in a monoculture where they only have one thing to eat for weeks on end is not exactly kind on the bees, either.

Still, as vegans say, they may not be able to protect bees completely by avoiding all these crops, but they can still do their best to help save the insects from exploitation by not buying honey.

One argument in favour of eating honey is that the point of bee keeping is, well, to keep bees. It's not to kill them, or to allow them to starve to death. Bees live in hives provided by beekeepers, but there's usually nothing to stop the bees leaving if that's what they want (after all, they wouldn't be able to make honey if they couldn't leave the hive).

There are more arguments, of course, and people must make up their own minds.

About the word beegan, however, my mind is firmly made up.

Sunday Rest: beegan. Word Not To Use Today. The word bee used to be bīo in Old English.