We have collated a range of information we hope will be helpful. There is so much information out there from varied sources and it can sometimes be a bit of a minefield trying to find what you need.
We have included these as sources we trust and we hope they can act as a guide to help you on your WFPB or Vegan journey.
One of the most important things to note is that everyone has an opinion and they have a right to that opinion. Sometimes we wish people would keep their opinions to themselves but if it’s constructive, sometimes it’s good to hear another side.
Inadvertently Vegan
In our opinion anyone that doesn’t eat animal products and helps not to contribute to the animal food industry is on the right journey.
Going WFPB is having a SIGNIFICANT POSITIVE impact on the environment and animal welfare, don't let anyone tell you different. You have incorporated the bulk of the Vegan positives. Your old shoes might still have some leather, but I would argue that is a positive environmental outcome as you shouldn't waste a functioning resource to consume a new resource until they are needed. Next time round when they need replacing you might go for a synthetic (aka vegan) shoe :-)
Some people though think that WFPB is not Vegan enough – thanks for your opinion
Some people call themselves Vegan and eat oysters – yeup, true story
Some people haven’t got there yet but are working their way toward being fully plant based
Whatever stage of the journey you are on, we hope that we might be of some help.
We class ourselves as vegan but we also have bees……… pin drop moment……… now that can be contentious 😉
We need the bees to pollinate our veggies as part of our journey in trying to produce a small amount of our food ourselves. Being in an urban area we had a few failed crops due to lack of pollination and worked out we had to hand pollinate crops such as pumpkins for them to bear any fruit. Who knew that was a thing?
Here we are criticising farmers for forcibly impregnating dairy cows and I was doing the same to the flowers of my pumpkin vines.
We need to manage our bees or they will abscond (swarm is the technical term). This involves checking on the hive health and occasionally removing excess honey. We chose to use the FLOW HIVE as to us, this provided the least detrimental outcome to the bees.
The advantages of the FLOW Hive as we see them are:
#1 It enables us to visually see the state of the bee’s honey stores without opening the hive
#2 We can relieve the excess honey from the hive without taking away all the wax they have produced themselves. Once that frame is cracked and the honey drained from that frame only, the bees clean the cells out and repair the cells. This is far less work than building out a whole new frame of wax to store honey in
#3 We only remove honey if all the frames are full and it’s SPRING or early SUMMER as they will easily max that out in a short space of time and then they will abscond
#4 We don’t empty any frames in late summer or autumn as hopefully they will draw down on those over autumn and winter. We live in the sub-tropics though and are only a few kilometres from the coast so our winters are mild and there are flowers available through winter. So for us, unlike some heavy winter climates where the bees are snowed in for 3 or more months, our bees can sometime make honey in winter rather than drawing down on their existing stores.
#5 Some people will tell you that you should let the bees do what they want to do, and generally we do. But letting bees abscond (swarm) in a residential area is actually irresponsible. If that happens because your aren’t managing the hive correctly then you are not meeting your obligations legally, to the bees or your neighbours.
#6 When the hive really maxes out then we do a split, which is were we split the hive in two and make a new hive with a new queen sharing the existing resources (bees, brood, pollen and honey stores) between the two hives.