Bee enslavement is immoral.

Pro has confused himself as Con was correcting his own mistaken definition in his original argument, admitting fault. Not accusing Pro of having an incorrect definition. Pro's entire first paragraph is now irrelevant and his questions won't be addressed. "Pro contends this makes beekeeping immoral because there is no relevance differences between bees, human children, and humans who are severely mentally handicapped. It is well established that it is not okay to exploit children nor the mentally handicapped via sweat shops. Also, it is wrong to kill members of these groups to maximize productivity." Comparing commercial bee keeping to the exploitation of a disabled human is ludicrous, but I'll entertain the thought. There are an abundance of relevant differences between bees and child/disabled slaves. Children and slaves are capable and willing to be compensated for their work. Human slaves are aware that they are slaves. Bees are not aware they are living in a bee keepers box nor can they communicate to their keepers their conditions, standards, or complaints they want in return for honey. To them, that box is their home and all they know is to take care of the queen. "The latter sentence is correct. As for the former, I don't think it takes much cognition to realize when you have been scammed." Bees do not have the mental capacity to deduct that their product is being sold for economic interests. Bees are not capable of rational thought or reasoning and therefore don't understand human socioeconomic structures. "We can create a hypothesis and test the hypothesis via observation." Sure, we could. Can you cite a peer-reviewed study in which a researcher managed to communicate with a bee to ask what it wants? "How about the queen bee's freedom then? Since the bees follow her blindly. Oh, wait she is trapped in a cell created by humans. She has a maximize lifespan of five years but never lives more than two because she is murdered to maximize productivity." The queen bee is unaware she is captive, as she doesn't have the mental capacity to understand the bee keeping process. Queen bees are generally confined to their hive anyway, reproducing and eating, whether or not she's in human captivity. The burden of proof that bees want freedom was on you as it was a point you brought up but instead you relied on speculation rather than documented fact. Also. the queen maintains her own slaves (drones). Clearly she doesn't have an issue with enslavement. Why are we wrong for doing the same thing? "Bees are smarter than you think. Animals are capable of communicating. It is possible that wild bees have learned to attack humans more aggressively from communicating with mistreated domestic bees. Crows for example can pass information about an oppressor to other crows." Ok....bees are also territorial. http://www.helpabee.org... Interesting fact about crows, I did not know that. However, it has no relevance to our debate, which is about bees. Unless you have a study that proves bees communicate with other hives, which is unlikely for the same reason ant colonies seldom coordinate...they're two different hives in the same area competing for resources. Certain bees have been known to wage war on other colonies. http://www.scientificamerican.com... "Pro contends that its a reasonable hypothesis that bees are slightly more aggressive towards invading humans due to being mistreated in captivity." You speculate that bees possibly coordinate with other hives because an entirely different species is capable of doing so and that leads to a reasonable hypothesis? I disagree with your assessment for obvious reasons. "Summary, mainstream science supports that bees are sentient. There is no relevant differences between bees, children, and the mentally handicapped. Already there are laws in place to protect the last two groups. It is inconsistent to withhold such protections from the first group, bees." There are plenty of differences between a child and a bee. A child and even the mentally handicapped are capable of abstract thought and complex reasoning, unlike bees. "The only reason humans allow this practice to continue is enforcing the status quo and because humans think they are superior to animals. The status quo is not self justifying, some cultures perform human sacrifices, showing the danger of blindly following tradition." Humans continue this practice because its lucrative and not immoral since bees are not aware that they are essentially slaves. Not to display our intellectual superiority. (Although we are superior.) "Humans cling to their superiority despite evidence that humans are just as mortal as animals. By what right do we have to play God with other sentient beings? To take total control by imprisoning the queen bee. By allowing this injustice to be legal we are paving the way for other atrocities." Humans are apex predators. We aren't the strongest or fastest creatures, but we are intellectually superior. To deny human superiority over other animals is a bit of a stretch.