Vegan Honey Substitutes

Top 7 Vegan Alternatives to Honey

Honey can easily be replaced in baking, desserts, hot beverages, pancakes, waffles, cooking, marinades, and more. Most of these liquid plant sweeteners can be substituted for honey using a simple 1:1 ratio.

1 Maple Syrup

The ​​concentrated sap of a maple tree.

2 Brown Rice Syrup

Derived from cooked brown rice that are exposed to enzymes which break down starches and turn them into smaller sugars.

3 Date Syrup

Made from whole dates simmered in water, puréeing the mixture then pressing it through a filter to strain out any insoluble parts.

4 Coconut Nectar

Derived from the nectar of coconut palm flowers.

5 Golden Syrup

Also known as light treacle and is made by either the refining of sugar cane or adding acid to a sugar water solution.

6 Barley Malt Syrup

Made from sprouted malted barley.

7 Agave Nectar

Produced from the agave plant.

 

Watch: Learn how to make your own vegan honey with just two ingredients.

Cruelty-Free Alternatives to Beeswax

You don’t need to exploit hives to make high-quality lip balms, candles, or skin care. These plant-based waxes serve as excellent, sustainable alternatives to beeswax.

Soy Wax

Made from the oil of soybeans

Uses: Soy wax is excellent for manufacturing candles and candle melts, and can also be used to make balms and solid perfumes.

Candelilla Wax

Derived from the leaves of a small shrub native to Mexico and the southwestern United States.

Uses: Candelilla wax can be used for lip balms, lipsticks, lip gloss, lotion bars as well as candles, skincare and different cosmetic products.

Carnauba Wax

Comes from the wax found on the leaves of the carnauba palm tree native to Brazil.

Uses: Carnauba wax acts as a hardening agent, thickener, and emulsifier. It’s used in a variety of cosmetic applications including lip balms, lipsticks, lotion bars,  mascaras, pomades, ointments and salves.

Why Honey is Not Vegan

Bees produce honey for bees, not humans. When nectar and pollen from flowers is in short supply, bees rely on their stored honey as their food source, which keeps them healthy and sees them through colder months.

The honey industry involves the factory farming of bees, where they are seen as commodities and exploited for the food they work so hard to make.

Cruel Practices in Commercial Beekeeping:

• Antibiotic Dependency: Beekeepers routinely administer antibiotics to hives to suppress diseases caused by stressful, overcrowded conditions. This disrupts the bees’ natural immune systems and can contaminate the local ecosystem.
• Artificial Insemination: To maintain control over genetics and egg production, queen bees are regularly subjected to instrumental or artificial insemination. This invasive process often involves squeezing drone bees to harvest semen.
• Nutritional Deprivation: A hive’s natural energy source – honey – is harvested and replaced with sugar water or corn syrup substitutes. These alternatives lack the vital micronutrients and immune-boosting compounds that bees need to survive winter.
• Bee Mortality: During large-scale honey extraction, hive boxes are opened, frames pulled out, and honeycombs are scraped away. This industrialised handling inevitably results in bees being squashed, mangled, and killed in the process.
• Destruction of the Hive Structure: To produce commercial beeswax, the honeycomb must be stripped from the bees’ home and melted down. This forces the colony to expend massive amounts of energy to rebuild their essential living and brood-rearing structures from scratch.

 

Watch: In this video Earthling Ed further explains why vegans don’t eat honey.

Easy Vegan Recipes that Replace Honey

A selection of recipes with honey substitutes on Vegan Easy.