“The blue-ringed octopus, despite its small size, carries enough venom to kill twenty-six adult humans within minutes. Their bites are tiny and often painless, with many victims not realizing they have been envenomated until respiratory depression and paralysis start to set in.[8] No blue-ringed octopus antivenom is available yet, making it one of the deadliest reef inhabitants in the ocean.”
Holy shit
And this is why I don’t go in the ocean anymore
Also the blue rings literally only show up when it is distressed so this person has angered it!!! You are in danger friend!!!
Actually this guy keeps them as pets they’re on his instagram (william_exotique) and he frequently holds then and I just? Don’t know why? And also every picture or video he posts of them shows the blue rings so they’re always in distress I just do not understand why he’s doing this
I mean OP pretty much covered it. A blue ringed octopus is almost on the level of CONE SNAIL on the list of things you ABSOLUTELY DO NOT PICK UP UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.
But ask and you shall receive, On this episode of “Fun Facts With Cuckoo,” DEAD. YOU’RE DEAD. EVERYTHING IS DEAD AND YOU SHOULD NEVER TOUCH ANYTHING IN THE OCEAN EVER AGAIN.
There are many things that will kill you.
[citation needed]
There are fewer, but still many things that will kill you FAST.
There are yet fewer things that kill you fast and by such an overwhelming margin of overkill that nervous laughter is our only solace in the dark of this terrible, surprisingly Lovecraftian world of unearthly horrors that we live in.
Of the things that I know about which will kill you fast via just plain insultingly potent venom, which is a not insignificant number of things because I know a not insignificant number of things, there are about 3 things in the ocean – IN THE WHOLE OCEAN – which are so insanely, mind-bogglingly deadly that there is pretty much no possible hope for survival (I mean you CAN, but god help you if you’re ever in that situation, because god’s just about damn near the only thing that CAN help you). THE. WHOLE. OCEAN.
Those three things are the Irukandji (a tiny (1cm) species of box jellyfish, which has stingers not only on its tentacles but on its BELL, for reasons no one has definitively figured out, and is so toxic despite its size its sting can cause a severe brain hemorrhage), the cone snail (a group of carnivorous sea snails that is accepted to be the most venomous animals on earth, with a STUPIDLY fast acting and extremely powerful neurotoxin that has in at least one case killed a human ALMOST INSTANTANEOUSLY, because the swimmer who found two beautiful shells (unfortunately cone snails tend to have very pretty shells which makes people want to pick them up) was holding them up for a picture and ended up being stabbed in the neck by not one but TWO cone snails at the same time, and it is believed that she was literally dead before she hit the ground, I mean LITERALLY in a 100% non-fictional and non-exaggerated way, in between the time the two cone snails stabbed her and the time her limp body hit the sand, she was not alive anymore), and the blue ringed octopus.
It is POSSIBLE to survive any of these. But not without immediate medical attention. Of these three, the Irukandji is by far the most treatable, because Australia and other coastal regions (including Florida and other parts of the US) are kind of experienced in dealing with box jellyfish.
The blue ringed octopus will fucking kill you. There’s no antidote for their venom, ONE COMPONENT OF WHICH (tetrodotoxin) is 1200 times deadlier than cyanide. It’s a powerful neurotoxin (most of the worst venoms are because the species that produce them need to kill or at least paralyze their prey quickly, like jellyfish whose fragile tentacles could be damaged if their food doesn’t stop struggling) that attacks the sodium channels and causes muscle paralysis. It doesn’t necessarily kill you quickly. It PARALYZES you quickly, so that you can’t really call for help or describe the problem, and you will probably end up slowly suffocating from a paralyzed diaphragm. Tetrodotoxin can be metabolized by the body in a matter of hours, but it can also kill you in a matter of minutes if you get a lethal dose (which isn’t much, the
LD50
or median lethal dose, the dose at which you have a 50% chance of survival, is only 8 MICROGRAMS per kilogram of body weight (as tested in mice)). This is, by venom standards, not a large amount, which means the animal that is capable of putting this venom inside your body is very very good at killing the absolute shit out of you.
DON’T TOUCH THE BLUE RINGED OCTOPUS.
Now, because overkill is my motto, let me briefly explain why Conus geographus is the undisputed champion of YOU WILL NOT SURVIVE, AND FURTHERMORE FUCK YOU FOR THINKING OTHERWISE.
A cone snail walks into a bar. You’d expect the bartender to ask, “what’s your poison,” but they were paralyzed before they could ask and OH LOOK they’re already FUCKING DEAD ON THE GROUND.
Conus geographus is about 4-6 inches long and nature’s equivalent of Avada Kedavra. Cone snails literally have their own KIND of toxins named after them: conotoxin. Not only is there no antidote, but their venom AGGRESSIVELY RESISTS our ability to find a cure, because we barely understand how it works AND conotoxins are so internally varied, even within a single species, that any one antidote isn’t going to help because they’re constantly mutating and evolving their venom to prevent their prey from evolving a resistance to it. Plus their venom is like, a bunch of different venoms all at once JUST IN CASE any one of them wasn’t good enough.
I want you to read these two sentences from the wiki page on conotoxin:
“Conotoxins have a variety of mechanisms of actions, most of which have not been determined.”
LD50 of tetrodotoxin is 8μg/kg? Conotoxin is 160 times more potent. FIFTY NANOGRAMS PER KILOGRAM HAS A 50% CHANCE OF KILLING YOU. A 220-POUND HUMAN HAS A 50% CHANCE OF SURVIVAL AGAINST JUST 5 MICROGRAMS OF CONOTOXIN.
I DID SOME MATH.
IT WOULD TAKE 7-9 MILLIGRAMS OF CONOTOXIN TO KILL A BLUE WHALE, THE HEAVIEST ANIMAL TO EVER LIVE. (based on weight estimates from 300-400,000 lbs.)
Conus geographus is so fucking deadly that “In two cases of envenomation, only 0.0002-0.0005 mg resulted in severe paralysis.”
THIS THING KILLS STUFF SO HARD THAT BEFORE YOU HEAR THE FIRST “MORTAL KOMBAT” IN THE MORTAL KOMBAT THEME, THERE’S PROBABLY ALREADY BEEN A FATALITY.
And guess what? Cone snails don’t do that NOOB SHIT with the superficial biting or stinging. Your wetsuit or gloves won’t protect you. Because homeboy didn’t bring teeth to evolution’s knife fight. Oh no. It brought a motherfucking radula POISON HARPOON. It’s lightning fast and has way more piercing power than some silly little cnidocytes or salivary bacteria.
Another component of their venom is being researched for its potential as a pain reliever. “WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT????” you might reasonably ask. And you would be right to do so, because science has gone too far and has surely sinned against the very image of Mollusca Kedavra. Well, it turns out the answer is “Research shows that certain component proteins of the venom target specific human pain receptors and can be up to 10,000 times more potent than morphine without morphine’s addictive properties and side-effects.” That’s right, the part of their venom that SPECIFICALLY DOESN’T HURT YOU is up to 10,000 times more potent than morphine.
Also, Conus geographus (along with one other cone snail species, C. tulipa) is the only known non-human animal to weaponize insulin. In addition to the normal insulin that the snails produce for their own use, their bodies manufacture an ADDITIONAL insulin molecule that is similar to the kind produced in fish (which they eat) for the sole purpose of stunning their prey through hypoglycemic shock. BECAUSE APPARENTLY THEY DON’T FEEL LIKE THEY’D KILL YOU HARD ENOUGH OTHERWISE.
IF you are going to survive the ALMIGHTY CONE SNAIL, WHO KNOWS NO FEAR, TRIUMPHANT HEDGEMON OF THE MOLECULAR ARMS RACE, TRUE BORN HEIR TO THE SCYTHE OF DEATH ITSELF, FISHSLAYER, GOD AMONG MOLLUSKS, WHOSE WRATH IS MERCIFUL ONLY IN ITS BREVITY, ADMIRABLE IN ITS BEAUTY AND UNSULLIED BY THE UNWORTHY TOUCH OF MORTAL HANDS OR SCALES OR REALLY ANYTHING IN RANGE OF ITS RADULA HARPOON, then literally the only thing that’s going to save you is for you to be kept alive artificially (externalizing your respiratory functions to force your body to continue breathing, basically) until the effects of the venom wear off. And because of how quickly this venom acts, you need to get that medical attention VERY, VERY FAST.
And if you don’t get it, you will still be conscious while the paralysis slowly suffocates you to death.
Don’t touch the pretty shells.
Please write a whole book.
I went to look at this guys instagram and he basically says that he has no fear of death (because he is already dying- I think he has a form of liver cancer but im not sure) : i read in the comments that the ones he has either 1) used up all their venom (i dont know how true a claim like that is but i know very little about the species) and 2) he lets them climb on him at their own pace and therefore dont feel threatened but idk kids dont touch them leave them be and dont be this guy.
Look, I’m already dying. I still would not fuck around with that blue ringed octopus. It’s not a pet, it’s clearly feeling threatened by this dude, and handling it provides exactly zero benefit for its welfare and survival. It does not want to be touched. Liver cancer is not an excuse for being a dick to animals, especially not extremely dangerous animals that you’re supposed to be afraid of.
So I did a fancy thing called fact checking. While the instagrammer noted above HAS posted this image on his insta, he also tagged it as NOT HIS HANDS. He also has another image of a blue ringed octopus that is NOT glowing or aggravated in his hand. Tagged “this is my hand” which means he does in fact let the animal be calm and comfortable with him when it is on his hand.
And now I’m mad that nobody told us we were given cows. Cause that’s really f*cking nice and nobody mentioned it at all.
American media tends to disregard that anyone donates to the US. And then Amurricans complain about money going abroad because “nobody helped the US in our disasters.”
>.>
Also, do you know how much a cow costs? O.O
It isn’t just a matter of how much a cow costs, its a matter of considering that Masai life is based around their cattle. Its their wealth, their food, and a significant part of their religion. Here’s a quote from Wikipedia:
“Traditional Maasai lifestyle centres around their cattle which constitute their primary source of food. The measure of a man’s wealth is in terms of cattle and children. A herd of 50 cattle is respectable, and the more children the better. A man who has plenty of one but not the other is considered to be poor.[37] A Maasai religious belief relates that God gave them all the cattle on earth, leading to the belief that rustling cattle from other tribes is a matter of taking back what is rightfully theirs, a practice that has become much less common.[38]”
So its not just “they gave us 14 cows”, its that they gave us something that is very important and significant to them, it is more than just a kind gesture that definitely deserves to be known and its a genuine shame that more people don’t know about it.
Wait, you guys DON’T KNOW that we offer help to the US when you have disasters???????
Shit, down here in Brazil we not only offered to send tracking units and doctors to help in 9/11 but we wanted to send a whole lot of donations to help with Katrina (we have experience with floods down here so we knew what kind of medicine to send to prevent outbreaks).
We alone had like 2 army airplanes full of medicine and non-perishables like baby formula, diapers, bottled water, mosquito nets and other stuff that’s needed to fight opportunistic diseases that hit flooded areas, enough to assist a good few thousand people at least, ready to go the day after it hit, but your government refused the donations.
The same thing happened to the Canadians and Europeans who offered help, the US embassies around the world told us all to give money to Red Cross.
And so we did, we all gave hundreds of millions of dollars to them, and then this happened:
So please, don’t you go spreading misinformation and prejudice against the rest of the world, WE DID OFFER HELP AND ORGANIZED IT EVEN FASTER THAN BUSH DID, BUT Y’ALL REFUSED IT.
Oh wow I had no idea this happened it’s really not talked about in media at all wow this is something good to know about wow
I’m so angry.
I didn’t know that other countries tried to help after 9/11 or Katrina. Like, that’s something we, the people, should hear about and we don’t.
Please don’t blame us for the shitty decisions our government makes. We don’t have as much control over our government as we would like to think and they keep a lot from us.
Spread this shit.
After Katrina, Cuba donated several hundred blankets. Think about that. A country that is suffering economically due directly to the US embargo offered to help us when we needed it by sending what they could. And once again, it was refused. We have a government that is so self-righteous that we refuse to accept disaster aid in order to maintain this facade that we are the most generous nation on earth.
Okay, Katrina thing.
Only Texans really knows this? and even then it’s not wide spread. Mexico sent their army. They sent their army for relief efforts. Didn’t call ahead, they drove all the way to San Antonio with doctors and food and all sorts of supplies.
When people actually got a call from them saying “Hey, we’re sending people up.” The people who answered said “What? We can’t…” “Too late, already there.” This was while the government was turning down help.
So yeah, other countries send relief.
Forest fires up in Washington last year? Firefighters from Australia came up to assist.
Like… we don’t hear about this shit. At all.
I can second the above with the fires.
Most the time, when people say “oh FEMA or something sent people right?” re: fires, its actually people from other countries showing up and kinda ignoring the government telling them to fuck off and staying on behalf of local departments because we REALLY need them.
If there’s a huge ass disaster, and the government is sitting there with a thumb up it’s ass, help is offered and most the time– shit, it gets there! But then the feds do something really fucking dirty. They insist they were the help, if it’s talked about at all.
They insist those people putting out fires were federal people, because to most people a fireman’s a fireman. The people handing out water and food, a relief worker is a relief worker. So on and so forth.
We had people come up when the fires were so bad a while ago– not the Australians, but i think there was like a German group of like 3 guys that flew themselves over? They came out of sheer “this is horrible and we’re helping” and my dad [local fire chief] had them working with our guys and the feds lost no time telling every news outlet that it was THEIR people doing all the fire knockdowns and structure work when these guys were running into buildings and grabbing people, pets, and people’s important documents because they knew papers were a pain in the ass to replace.
What you gotta understand is that our government is very intent on selling us and the rest of the world [as much as possible] the idea of a powerful and self reliant country. All our reporting on disasters, starts with the scaremongering and then moves to “but our people can handle it because we’re the best at handling things” and then they move on before the idea it’s out of control comes to mind. The average person outside of the disaster has no idea, if they have never been around such an event or met someone who regularly deals with these things, they will kinda probably nod along with that. Because we have no real scope on the scale and impact– by design. Our media intake is very controlled to slant everything to the “eh, we can handle it and everyone else out there– they need our help because they’re not so good at handling disasters like we are.” People who know better, reading international news, interacting with international social groups, looking outside their sphere of community– we know better but that kinda slant is really hard to break from because of that grip American media has on information. So, taking that knowledge, we further have restricted reporting on certain disasters because they’re considered unimportant. Hurricanes are considered important, earthquakes are only considered important if it wrecks something the government cares about or somewhere a couple million people live that they’ll upset the national money flow/they can throw money at someone to make the news care, floods are only important if it’s in a similar manner to earthquakes but since they occur annually they’re rarely reported on nationally, mudslides that kill people or leave hundreds homeless aren’t important to the government even through they happen constantly, wildfires that consume most of the nation/continent each year generally are unimportant until they consume a town or threaten a government interest/money flow location. Terrorist attacks are always important because people will talk about them.
So, when we do get help for any of the above, it’s possible that most people may have no idea about what’s happened, let alone that help’s been sent. Or if people know something happened, the details are vague– the news don’t care to give the nitty gritty. You’ll know something happened and people are suffering and “gee, isn’t it good you’re not them” and then now the weather.
So, yeah, basically no one really knows we get help.
At 23 weeks chances are good that this fetus is being removed because it is:
a) Already dead b) Suffering abnormalities such as it developed no brain, or had a serious genetic condition that would kill it quickly. c) Was actively dying (not dead yet but would be within a few days, 100% guarunteed, 0 chance of saving it) d) Was actively killing the pregnant person.
Late term abortions, as shown here, make up only 1.5% of all abortions. The above four reasons are the only reasons such procedures are performed. Almost every abortion performed after 20 weeks is done on a wanted pregnancy. So you know what that means? You’re calling people who miscarried murderers. You just implied people who had a miscarriage or would have died murderers. How dare you call yourself pro life for that.
Now for the fun fact: They used to use a different procedure for these abortions in which they removed the fetus intact and allowed these people to grieve for the intact fetus, have pictures, etc. Pro lifers decided people losing a wanted pregnancy should not be allowed to grieve an intact fetus and we were left with this.
Congrats. Your movement is the reason they use this one now when people lose a wanted pregnancy late into the pregnancy. Your movement is intentionally making it harder for people to recover from the lose of a much wanted pregnancy. It’s your movement who left grieving people with this instead of allowing them something easier to deal with, something that would let them hold their deceased fetus.
Congrats. If you think you were ‘saving’ something think again. You’re hurting born people. You’re hurting people who lose a wanted pregnancy by shaming this abortion procedure. And you’re movement is the reason this is procedure doctors are forced to use now. You’re probably an awful and mean person to tell people losing a wanted pregnancy that they’re killers.
This is the post that made me pro-choice. Glad to see it still circulating.
I lost a baby brother at something like 14 weeks because he’d attached to the uterine wall backward, and when he started kicking he tore himself away and hemorrhaged to death.
You goddamn “pro-lifers” were ready to let my mother die with him rather than “killing him before God’s time.” He was already dead; it was a matter at that point of him bleeding out. My mother was bleeding with him. My mother was dying with him. And the hospital she was in? That fine pro-life hospital? Refused to let her transfer to another hospital to abort. She had a ten-year-old and an eight-month old at home, but making sure Joey didn’t die “before God’s time” was more goddamn important than making sure my mother survived.
My mother asked the nurse if she’d take pictures, saying that the ultrasound images were really blurry and she’d at least like something to remember him by. The nurse, after Joey was dead and my mom was in recovery, threw pictures on my mother’s bed. This fine pro-life nurse gave my mother pictures of a baby that was jet black where he wasn’t blood red. He didn’t even look human. And she threw the pictures in my mother’s face, like it was her fault that there was a terrible, terrible biological mistake that made it impossible for her baby to survive.
We wanted him. Not that the fact that you’ll notice he already had a name picked out would’ve clued you in. I would have had a baby brother just a year younger than me. My sophomore year in college I spent a lot of time crying alone in the student union, thinking it wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair, I should be taking my brother to dinner with friends or helping him study for his first midterms. I’m a big sister with no little brother to show for it, and there was a year that pain and loss came back eighteen years after the fact to wound me when I least expected it. There was a year when there were songs I couldn’t bring myself to listen to without crying because they reminded me of what I could have had. And I still wish, I still wish, they’d aborted him. Because the end result would have been the same. And my family would have been spared a world of pain believing we were losing brother and mother both. I was in ICU at the time after an allergic reaction that left me unable to breathe. How do you suppose my sister felt? Mother dying, sister dying, brother dead—just a matter of time on that one. Ten years old, watching her entire family struggling to breathe, struggling to live.
And you motherfuckers would call my mom a murderer for this. And you cared more for a baby already dying than you did for the two already born who needed their mom.
Fuck you. You’re not pro-life. You’re anti-woman, anti-family, anti-compassion and anti-love.
Someone on my FB shared this photo and I had to go sit in silence for awhile at the stupidity of her comment that went along with it. Most people don’t wait so late into a pregnancy and randomly decide ‘kill the baby’ because they want to. What the fuck is wrong with people.
IF IT HAS BEEN A VERY LONG DAY, YOU ARE ‘WEARY’. IF SOMEONE IS ACTING IN A WAY THAT MAKES YOU SUSPICIOUS, YOU ARE ‘WARY’.
ALL IN ‘DUE’ TIME, NOT ‘DO’ TIME
‘PER SE’ NOT ‘PER SAY’
THANK YOU
BREATHE – THE VERB FORM IN PRESENT TENSE
BREATH – THE NOUN FORM
THEY ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE
WANDER – TO WALK ABOUT AIMLESSLY
WONDER – TO THINK OF IN A DREAMLIKE AND/OR WISTFUL MANNER
THEY ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE (but one’s mind can wander)
DEFIANT – RESISTANT DEFINITE – CERTAIN
WANTON – DELIBERATE AND UNPROVOKED ACTION (ALSO AN ARCHAIC TERM FOR A PROMISCUOUS WOMAN)
WONTON – IT’S A DUMPLING THAT’S ALL IT IS IT’S A FUCKING DUMPLING
BAWL- TO SOB/CRY
BALL- A FUCKING BALL
YOU CANNOT “BALL” YOUR EYES OUT
AND FOR FUCK’S SAKE, IT’S NOT “SIKE”; IT’S “PSYCH”. AS IN “I PSYCHED YOU OUT”; BECAUSE YOU MOMENTARILY MADE SOMEONE BELIEVE SOMETHING THAT WASN’T TRUE.
THANK YOU.
*slams reblog*
IT’S ‘MIGHT AS WELL’. ‘MIND AS WELL’ DOES NOT MAKE GRAMMATICAL SENSE.
Do you know how many dogs I’ve met that get scared or anxious around men because in their previous home men hit them? A lot, and they are very protective of the women who have adopted them now.
Men who are violent towards women are often violent towards animals as well. They think we’re all chattel. If a man wants you to choose between your dog or cat or him, dump the guy. Those animals will love you for the rest of your life, loyal and true.
Actually, I have something to add.
The other day I saw a story where a woman was asking why her dogs had suddenly started growling at her boyfriend whenever he was in the same room as her son.
And my immediate thought was ‘that boyfriend has hurt the kid somehow.’
Spoilers: that was exactly the case.
Trust ur dogs when they say something is off.
The first time my sister came to visit, via plane, after I got my dog, pupper growled at her and wouldn’t go near her for the first day. Next visit was by car (two day drive)and pupper LOVED my sister. They snuggled and played and none of us could figure out why the change. We thought maybe the scent of my sisters cat had lingered on her clothes, making that first visit a rough one. Whereas when she came by car, the scent had had time to wear off. Well that was partially true…
Fast forward about six months when I went north to visit my family. My sister walked into my parents’ house and pupper ran to greet my sister. Stopped dead in her tracks and started growling and barking. Hackles raised, full protection mode. My sisters husband had just walked in behind her.
My precious puppy wanted NOTHING to do with him. She barked, growled, ran away, and sat between him and my sister. Y’all my dog had spent maybe a weekend a half around my sister but protected her like this was her flesh and blood.
Eventually, my sister filed for divorce on grounds of “Extreme and repeated mental, emotional, and sexual abuse.” Divorce was final in less than a month because her claims were substantiated.
Trust the dog, honey. They KNOW.
I’ve never owned dogs, but I used to work with horses (which are a lot like big dogs).
There was this one horse I worked with named Tonto. He was a doll. He followed me like a puppy, snuck treats out of my pocket, he was the sweetest thing. We were practically inseparable.
A guy I was considering dating came to visit me one day, and Tonto wanted NOTHING to do with him. Normally well behaved, he shoved himself between us and would NOT let this guy near me. He was stomping, acting really aggressive, and tried to bite the guy. This horse was practically dragging me back toward the barn. At that moment, despite being like, 17, I knew something was up, and ultimately things didn’t pan out for guy and me.
A year later I found out he had lied about his age (he said he was 18 but he was actually 27) he was arrested for sexually assaulting an 11 year old girl.
16 oz of honey requires 1152 bees to travel 112,000 miles and visit 4.5 million flowers.
Most of the honey we get at supermarkets and stores don’t come from natural hives.
Honey is an animal product, produced when bees digest nectar they have collected and then regurgitate it. It is an animal product, just like an egg or milk. Yes, a bee is an insect and not technically considered an animal by many people, but a bee’s body changes the composition of what it ingests, just like other animals.
However, there is another reason vegans won’t eat honey, and that is because it is harmful to another living creature. According to Daniel Hammer, bees do experience pain and suffering while they are being exploited for their products (not just honey but also beeswax, royal jelly, and more). There is simply no way beekeepers, humane or otherwise, can avoid harming or killing bees while they are extracting the bees’ products. Many vegans choose their lifestyle because they wish to avoid harming any other creature, and so they choose not to eat honey.
Check out this couple of articles that are pretty complete about everything around this topic 🙂
3 Reasons Not to Eat Honey > This one explain about the environmental damage and how we are killing the bees.
As a beekeeper, let me say the following.
As a vegan, you depend upon beekeeping. It doesn’t matter if you never use beeswax or eat honey. You still depend on beekeeping. It is absolutely impossible not to.
Because here’s the secret; you know all those delicious fruits and vegetables you eat? You wouldn’t have them if it wasn’t for bees, and here’s another secret; those bees were probably either kept by the farmer who grew them for the purpose of pollinating his/her crops, or moved to the farm during pollination season by a beekeeper.
If you’ve ever eaten a cherry, almond, blueberry, tomato, melon, squash, raspberry, strawberry…hell, most fruits or veggies…you’ve benefited from beekeeping. There is simply no way to avoid it. If you leave it up to whatever pollinators happen to stop in from the surrounding area, your yields will suffer dramatically, which means less produce and less money for the farmer. Therefore, the easy and universally preferred method is to plop a few hives on the property. The girls will make sure that just about every last almond/cherry/blueberry flower is pollinated (They’re VERY good at what they do) and you can happily harvest a bumper crop. This is a universally used practice among food producers.
And do you know the best way to help make sure the bees survive?
Keep them. Organically, without using any chemicals. And here’s a secret about beekeeping; you inspect the hives whether or not you take honey, to make sure the bees are healthy and doing well. (There are mites and diseases that can severely harm bees, and even as an organic beekeeper who doesn’t use chemicals on her girls there are methods I use to prevent/treat things like varroa mite infestation that can kill an otherwise healthy hive).
And yes, when you open a hive to inspect it, you might crush one or two bees. But tell me, honestly, that you’ve never killed an insect. Bees themselves will kill sick/non productive members of the hive to ensure the health of the hive as a whole; I don’t see how my accidentally squishing one to ensure the health of the other 50,000 is any different.
And this is what all beekeepers do. And if you, as before mentioned, ever eat anything that isn’t grain-based, this is what took place to put that food on your plate.
I would also like to point out that bees will store as much honey as they possibly can…which usually ends up being waaaaay more than they actually can use. To survive a log Iowa winter, my bees need about 100 lbs of honey per hive. Well, last year one hive had TWICE that. (I took 50 pounds, leaving them MORE than enough to get through the winter. I just checked on them today; they’re alive and healthy).
You are NOT hurting them by taking a little honey for yourself, no more than you already are by looking in on them every two or three weeks to make sure they’re healthy.
And again, if you ever eat any fruits or veggies, SOMEONE IS ALREADY KEEPING BEES TO POLLINATE THEM AND INSPECTING THEM TO MAKE SURE THEY’RE HAPPY AND HEALTHY.
KEEPING BEES IS NOT WHAT IS KILLING BEES IT IS WHAT IS SAVING BEES.
WITHOUT BEES YOUR VEGAN DIET IS IMPOSSIBLE.
WITHOUT THAT “EVIL” EXPLOITATION OF BEES YOUR VEGAN DIET IS IMPOSSIBLE.
AGAIN, BEEKEEPING IS WHAT IS SAVING BEES NOT KILLING THEM.
SO IF YOU EAT A LITTLE HONEY IT IS HONESTLY NO WORSE THAN EATING SOME ALMONDS AND FRUIT SALAD.
“Drops mic”
Why can’t bees be protected without taking the honey they produce? I’m all for their protection and I didn’t born yesterday, I know that without bees we all gonna die, but why is it mandatory to steal their honey?
Yeah, that made no sense… You can keep bees without stealing from them. You can keep horses without riding them. You can keep dogs without abusing them. Do people really not get this?
Again, you don’t seem to be getting this.
Yes. You can keep bees without taking honey from them. But, as I said before, you’re ALREADY in the hive checking for diseases and pests. That, if anything, is what causes bees stress, not you taking a frame or two of honey (each frame of honey can hold 15 pounds!).
Also, there’s a REASON you take honey from bees, not just because you want to eat it.
See, like I said before, bees will store as much honey as they can. It’s instinctive. However, there’s only so much room in a hive to put stuff, and honey isn’t the only thing in a hive. They also need room to raise brood, store pollen, ect. Now, if they run out of room, they’ll start feeling overcrowded, which will trigger swarming activity. You can, of course, add more supers (boxes) to the hive, but there’s a limit on how many workers one queen can produce, and you don’t want more supers than they can police, even if all of them are stuffed full of honey. That way lies pests and raiding. So, what we want to do is make sure that they don’t feel overcrowded, while making sure that they don’t have more room than they can take care of.
When bees feel overcrowded, they swarm. When they swarm, they raise a new queen. The old queen and half the bees will then leave to try and find someplace to start a new hive. 90% of swarms die. As a beekeeper, you don’t want this.
You can, of course, purposefully let them start raising a new queen and then split a new hive off of the old one if you want to. I’ve done this myself. But this is not always desirable, for many reasons (no more room for more hives, can’t take care of more, don’t have a spare hive body on hand, ect.) There’s also the fact that a recently swarmed hive is susceptible to raiding by wasps/skunks (skunks LOVE to raid hives, the little bastards) or mice, as half the bees that would have defended it before are now gone. You don’t want this either; raiding can kill a hive as quick as disease or pests. (This is why I keep a VERY close eye on any hives that I’ve recently split, and have taken potshots at skunks in the backyard with a slingshot before. Not to kill them, just to scare them off.)
If you don’t want them to swarm, the easiest way to keep them from feeling cramped and give them a little new breathing room is to pull a few surplus honey frames they’ve filled up and replace them with empty frames. The girls will then happily go back to work filling the new empty frames with honey or brood or whatever they decide needs to go in all that new space. They don’t feel crowded any longer, the hive doesn’t swarm and stays strong, everyone’s happy.
And what, then, am I supposed to do with these three frames of honey I pulled? Throw them away? Hell no. That’s 30-40 pounds of delicious, right there.
Humans and bees have what’s called a symbiotic relationship. We both benefit from the arrangement. Don’t diss things if you don’t understand how they work.
And, one more time…keeping bees is necessary for your vegan diet to remain viable. A beekeeper is going to inspect all of those hives anyway, which is the most stressful part of beekeeping for the bees. You are, with your eating habits, (and by that I mean ‘really just eating’, because there’s NO diet that doesn’t rely on beekeeping) reliant on this practice. Taking a frame or two of honey is the LEAST stressful part of inspecting a hive for the bees.
Source; have kept bees organically for 10 years, help other hobbyists in the area who want to start keeping bees. Garden organically. Generally Actually Know Where My Food Comes From And What It Takes To Get It On My Plate.
I understand some people want to be kind and compassionate. But there’s such a thing as being ignorantly compassionate, to the point where you forget how to do research, apparently.
I live for these defences of honey tbh
and the comments that give insight into beekeeping just make it better ❤
bolding for emphasis:
“Humans and bees have what’s called a symbiotic relationship. We both
benefit from the arrangement. Don’t diss things if you don’t understand
how they work.”
lav3nderwolftumblr 
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