Is honey considered vegan?

Honey is not vegan. In short, the core tenet of veganism is living without exploiting anything in the animal kingdom, and most (if not all) vegans consider taking honey from bees a form of exploitation.

I'm vegan, and don't eat honey, but I think it very much depends on why you went vegan. If it's for health then I don't think it makes a difference. If you want to get into a moral argument you can make the case that it's closer to using wool than using milk... (I don't make the argument, but I respect that people can) but the choice is yours - it was a pretty easy choice for me as I didn't like honey to start with... :)

This is purely a semantics question. It depends on how you define "vegan." If you define vegan to mean something like "contains no animal products," then honey is not vegan. Can you be vegan if you eat honey, or can honey be part of a vegan diet? Those are more slippery questions. I know many people who identify as vegan and practice veganism for various combinations of health, environmental and ethical reasons, who choose to consume honey.

In my experience, there isn't really a such thing as being a vegan for health reasons, because I do not know of any vegan diets whose purpose is to optimize nutrition. For instance, the American Heart Association recommends eating fish (particularly fatty fish) at least two times (two servings) a week. I have never met someone who identifies as vegan primarily for health reasons. The only people I know who never "cheat" on their vegan diets are vegan strongly for ethical reasons. However, it may be a healthy step for you to take in your diet because exposing yourself to the vegan community may lead to you eating a lot more food that is healthy for you and a lot less food that is unhealthy for you. Would the vegan community accept you if you still consumed honey? Depends on the people, but in my experience with vegan communities as someone who still consumes fish, probably.

Could you identify as vegan if you still consumed honey? Sure, that's up to you. Will other people agree that you are vegan or accept you as a vegan? In my experience, non-vegans will consistently think of a honey-inclusive diet as vegan, partly because they, like you up to before you asked this question, haven't given it much thought. Strict vegans who don't eat honey might not, but I don't see any reason this should be important to you.

Semantic question, I subscribe, but I'd like to add a consideration. Let's think to the reason why people became vegan.

• Cultural reasons? Surely this is not the case of western vegan movement (on the contrary, not rarely vegans are despised for they choice)
• Religion reasons? Surely some eastern religion push to veganism, but in western context religion plays no role in vegan choice. Personally, I'm atheist, like the few vegan I know.
• Health reasons? Man is omnivore, why don't eat animal food should be healthier? (normally vegan diet is not dangerous, but evidently this is not a reason to became vegan)
• Love for animals? I don't find this plays an important role in vegan movement. Personally, I hate that stupid and smelly being (but not so much to improve torture on them with my food choice)

In most of cases western people became vegan simply because they don't like causing terrible pains (castrations, spending life in a cage big as your body, violent killing, etc., look for example to mercyforanimals investigations and sites) for very frivolous reasons (meat taste, urban legend that veganism is normally dangerous for health, etc.). Maybe there are more important problems in the world, but none with a so simply and not demanding solution. Most of western vegan did this choice after consideration that only for very important reason (medical research, for example) we could eventually cause pain to a living being (I said "pain", so I'm speaking about living being with a complex nervous system, not about vegetables or micro-organisms). So veganism has many roots (economic, ecological, etc.) but fight against useless pain is surely the first one. Now, having said all that... what about honey? The question is: "bees feel pain?", or more precisely: "honey industry cause pain?". I'm vegan and I eat honey, because I suppose the answer is "not" (but I'd like to know biology answer).

For ethical vegans (i.e. for whom ethical reasons alone are enough to follow a vegan lifestyle) the question of whether honey is vegan largely a question of whether bugs feel pain, and if they do, how much of suffering does a bee life contain.

Since insect sentience is an open question, and knowing the farming industry's usual horrific treatment even of mammals and birds, honey is seldom considered vegan.