Holy **** this was one of those things that changed my mind just by looking at the title because I realised I was holding a belief that was clearly mistaken if you think about it logically for a second, but no one actually ever really challenged me on it. Why did I never realise that honeybees are obviously the most farmed animal on earth?
I always told people that farmed honey is terrible, but terrible in the same way as that dairy is terrible. I would have put the order of ‘plz stop eating this for the love of god’ at
eggs & white meat
red meat,
dairy and honey
I will bump honey up the list (50% vibes based list by the way, not calibrated on exact SAD/portion).
PS: Would have been easier if you listed ‘#days of farming’ per ‘per capita consumption’ rather than per kilo. 1kg is roughly the yearly consumption per person in Europe I believe (surprisingly high?), vs 20kg for chicken. Also, the link to the 97% thing didn’t work, so I couldn’t really check that stat. (It seems oddly specific given uncertainty)
The link (which does work for me, perhaps try another browser) is to an archive of a 2018 article by Jiwoon Hwang which has a table with numbers of different animals, and states “1 trillion animals exist due to humans, 97% attributable to honey”. As Bentham’s Bulldog and the link itself caveats, this is not true, simply because the table does not include any other farmed insects. There were 1-1.2 trillion insects farmed to be eaten by humans or animals in 2020, plus many more silkworms and cochineals. @Jason Schukraftestimated “that at any given time in 2017 there were between 1.4 and 4.8 trillion adult managed honey bees”, for comparison. Below is the calculation from Jiwoon Hwang:
Estimated average lifespan of honey bees: 4 months (25-35 days summer, 6-8 months winter) (Amdam, Gro Vang, and Stig W. Omholt. “The regulatory anatomy of honeybee lifespan.” Journal of Theoretical Biology 216.2 (2002): 209.)
Calculation: World Honey Production 2014: 1,510,566,000,000 grammes. (1,510,566 tonnes * 1000 * 1000) One teaspoon: 5mL (metric, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teaspoon#Metric_teaspoon) One teaspoon of honey: 6.8 gramme (5mL * 1.36 kg/L) Honey per honey bee: 0.56666666666667 gramme (6.8 gramme * (1/12)) Honey lifetimes per year: 2,665,704,705,882 (1,510,566,000,000/0.56666666666667) Honey years per year: 888,568,235,294 (2,665,704,705,882 * (4/12))
Edit: note that the 97% number also doesn’t include shrimp.
Thanks for the reply :) the number you cite for other insects is yearly turnover, not how many are alive at any moment, right? So the number might not be as far off?
But yeah, without looking at any data, other major farmed insects numbers are probably increasing at a faster rate than honeybees.
Ah yes, so I guess the comparison is roughly 1-1.2 trillion other insects yearly (2020), versus 4.2-14.4 trillion honeybees yearly (2017). So, 7-29% as many as the number of honeybees.
(Multiplying 1.4-4.8 trillion honeybees alive at one time by 3 to get the annual number, because of the 4 month average lifespan).
Holy **** this was one of those things that changed my mind just by looking at the title because I realised I was holding a belief that was clearly mistaken if you think about it logically for a second, but no one actually ever really challenged me on it. Why did I never realise that honeybees are obviously the most farmed animal on earth?
I always told people that farmed honey is terrible, but terrible in the same way as that dairy is terrible. I would have put the order of ‘plz stop eating this for the love of god’ at
eggs & white meat
red meat,
dairy and honey
I will bump honey up the list (50% vibes based list by the way, not calibrated on exact SAD/portion).
PS: Would have been easier if you listed ‘#days of farming’ per ‘per capita consumption’ rather than per kilo. 1kg is roughly the yearly consumption per person in Europe I believe (surprisingly high?), vs 20kg for chicken. Also, the link to the 97% thing didn’t work, so I couldn’t really check that stat. (It seems oddly specific given uncertainty)
The link (which does work for me, perhaps try another browser) is to an archive of a 2018 article by Jiwoon Hwang which has a table with numbers of different animals, and states “1 trillion animals exist due to humans, 97% attributable to honey”. As Bentham’s Bulldog and the link itself caveats, this is not true, simply because the table does not include any other farmed insects. There were 1-1.2 trillion insects farmed to be eaten by humans or animals in 2020, plus many more silkworms and cochineals. @Jason Schukraft estimated “that at any given time in 2017 there were between 1.4 and 4.8 trillion adult managed honey bees”, for comparison. Below is the calculation from Jiwoon Hwang:
Data for honey bees:
FAOSTAT, Livestock Primary, World, Production Quantity, Honey, natural, 2014 (http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QL) : 1,510,566 tonnes
“How much honey does the average worker honey bee make in her lifetime? – 1⁄12 teaspoon.” (https://www.honey.com/newsroom/press-kits/honey-trivia)
Density of Honey: 1.36 kg/l (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey#Nutritional_and_sugar_profile)
Estimated average lifespan of honey bees: 4 months (25-35 days summer, 6-8 months winter)
(Amdam, Gro Vang, and Stig W. Omholt. “The regulatory anatomy of honeybee lifespan.” Journal of Theoretical Biology 216.2 (2002): 209.)
Calculation:
World Honey Production 2014: 1,510,566,000,000 grammes. (1,510,566 tonnes * 1000 * 1000)
One teaspoon: 5mL (metric, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teaspoon#Metric_teaspoon)
One teaspoon of honey: 6.8 gramme (5mL * 1.36 kg/L)
Honey per honey bee: 0.56666666666667 gramme (6.8 gramme * (1/12))
Honey lifetimes per year: 2,665,704,705,882 (1,510,566,000,000/0.56666666666667)
Honey years per year: 888,568,235,294 (2,665,704,705,882 * (4/12))
Edit: note that the 97% number also doesn’t include shrimp.
Thanks for the reply :) the number you cite for other insects is yearly turnover, not how many are alive at any moment, right? So the number might not be as far off?
But yeah, without looking at any data, other major farmed insects numbers are probably increasing at a faster rate than honeybees.
Ah yes, so I guess the comparison is roughly 1-1.2 trillion other insects yearly (2020), versus 4.2-14.4 trillion honeybees yearly (2017). So, 7-29% as many as the number of honeybees.
(Multiplying 1.4-4.8 trillion honeybees alive at one time by 3 to get the annual number, because of the 4 month average lifespan).