Insects are part of the animal kingdom and they share many properties with the animal kingdom, like autonomy.

According to the US constitution, Hens are not animals. Also, Rabbits are poultry (birds) and thus not animals too and exempt from any anti-cruelty law. This discrepancy is generally required, since it makes it easy to exploit the subject. For example, it will be difficult to eat meat if hens are not called chickens, cows are not called beef, dogs are not called fragrance and calf's are not called veal. It will be difficult to exploit blacks or women if they are considered humans. This is natural.

Here is the scientific classification of Bees:

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Hymenoptera
Suborder:	Apocrita
Superfamily:	Apoidea

As you can see, they belong to the Animal Kingdom (Animalia) and are capable of physical pain and suffering. Their Class is Insecta. Insecta is part of Animalia.

Every word has a connotative and denotative meaning. The word vegetarian comes from the Sanskrit word "Shakahari" which means people who only consume plants. Early Aryans were Shakaharies, or vegetarians and although they lived near the Indus river, they never fished for spiritual reasons.

At this time, horses use to be God. (they were nature/animal worshipers which is commendable)

Later, for numerous reasons, cows were promoted to God. Then they started to drink the milk of cow as a symbol of drinking god - the mother creator's milk to signify that we are children of God.

Then milk was introduced in the definition of shakahar/vegetarian, even though it was an animal product and does not grow on trees.

As society progressed and as the meat-eaters invaded, eggs too were added and then fish and hen. So then the original meaning of the word got lost and a new word was required to identify people who consume only plant products. This word is what we today call Vegan, but it is actually a synonym for vegetarian.

It's like when cinema started, Star was a very high honor. Then everyone became a Star and a new word was needed - Superstar. Then more people became Superstars and a new word was coined - Megastar. Etc.

Here is the textbook definition of Veganism:

Veganism (pronounced vee-gun-ism) is a lifestyle which seeks to abstain (to the extent possible) from the use of any product or habit or behavior that might, at any stage of its development, have involved any harm upon any sentient creature. Such harm might be in the form of deliberately inflicted fear, discomfort, injury, or death; or even the unfairness of depriving others of what is rightfully theirs.

So, people who consume vegan food plus honey are non-vegetarians, not vegans.

The word "veg" is short for a word derived from vegetation. Anything that does not grow on trees or are part of the plant kingdom is not "veg". Honey is "non-veg" as we say in India to signify non-plant-based foods/clothing.

Honey bees live in colonies of up to 60,000, capable of complex social behaviour. Although individual bees are short lived, a colony can continue for many years. Honey, the colony’s food reserve, is stored in a "comb" - an array of hexagonal wax cells. Honey is nectar produced by flowers, swallowed by bees, then concentrated, partly digested and finally regurgitated. It could fairly be described as bee vomit. Beeswax for cell building is secreted by glands on the underbelly of the bee.

From earliest recorded times, humans have manipulated bees for their own purposes. There are millions of commercial bee farmers in the world, plus many thousands of small scale "hobby" beekeepers. At the heart of every bee colony is the queen bee - the only one capable of laying eggs. While the ordinary "worker" bees live just a few weeks during the active season, the queen can live for several years. However, in commercial beekeeping the queens are regularly killed and replaced - some "experts" advise as often as every six months. New queens are mass produced by specialist breeders under controlled conditions - virgin queens are artificially inseminated with sperm from crushed males. The queen often has her wings clipped off to prevent swarming - the natural way for the colony to reproduce itself. Sometimes whole colonies are killed off to save feeding them over the winter. When they are kept through the winter, the honey is often removed and replaced with sugar candy or syrup, which are cheaper, though less healthy for the bees.

Beekeepers often transport their colonies to areas of flowering crops where the bees pollinate the flowers, increasing crop yields and earning fat fees for the beekeepers. However, this is to the detriment of local wild bees and other pollinating insects, which are swamped by the temporary visitors.

As with all intensively farmed animals, commercial bee colonies are prone to the rapid spread of disease. The Varroa mite is rife among both commercial and "hobby" bee colonies and is threatening the few remaining wild honey bee colonies.

Honey and beeswax are used in food, cosmetics and toiletries, candles and polishes. Both can be easily replaced by animal-free alternatives. Other bee products such as propolis, pollen, royal jelly and venom are valued by humans for supposed health-giving properties, though it is questionable whether they are of any real benefit - except to the bees themselves.

Vegans use no bee products, preferring to forgo the doubtful benefits and well known risks [such as infant botulism] of substances stolen from bees.