VEGETARIAN-FOOD AND JAIN-CONDUCT > Honey

Along with renunciation of wine and meat, Jain religion preaches the renunciation of honey also. Honey is the excrement of bees. It is produced out of their destruction and incessantly innumerable Jivas are born in it. Therefore, this too is uneatable.

How & Why Bees make Honey

(Section added by AtmaDharma.com on 26 Nov 2018)

Bees use honey as a food for themselves.

Bees gather the sugary juice from flowers by sucking it with their tongues. As the bee sucks the nectar from the flower, it is stored in her special honey stomach ready to be transferred to the honey-making bees in the hive. If hungry she opens a valve in the nectar “sac” and a portion of the payload passes through to her own stomach to be converted to energy for her own needs. When her nectar “sacs” are full, the honeybee returns to the hive.

At the hive, nectar is delivered to one of the indoor bees and is then passed mouth-to-mouth from bee to bee until its moisture content is reduced from about 70% to 20%. This changes the nectar into honey. Finally, the honey is placed in storage cells and capped with beeswax in readiness for the arrival of newborn baby bees.

Therefore :

if you eat honey you depriving the newborn bee babies of their food AND
if you eat honey you are in effect eating what has been through many bee mouths!! Disgusting!