The bees make more than they need. They'll keep filling up cells till there's no room for larvae then swarm. That takes a while but in a meantime, the honey sitting there attracts pests and predators that can harm the colony.

I believe it’s to encourage them to increase numbers, but I haven’t discussed that with her. She’s the type of nerd I know probably has a good reason so I never asked

"It's complicated".

It's the same category of dispute as the "eggs or milk can be vegan under certain circumstances" one. The argument is that rescued farm animals have been so warped by human intervention that it's actively harmful for you to not use their produce - dairy cows can in rare cases die, and otherwise will just be miserable, if left unmilked. Chickens lay too many eggs, and leaving unf. chicken eggs in the coop can lead to the chickens learning to eat their own eggs, so you have to remove them. (I don't hold a position on these claims, I'm just reporting what I see come up in the argument.) Bees fall into the same sort of category, they've been so selectively bred that they now produce far more honey than they can possibly use, so removing and eating some of it helps to mitigate the negative impact that humans have had on the creatures.

Regardless though: cows, chickens and bees are all still animals. I don't think any vegans are gonna argue that one.

Well veganism is about reducing suffering. If the cows didnt suffer to produce that milk, like no forced insemination, calfs aren't separated from their mother, male calfs aren’t slaughtered, the cows don’t have unnaturally large udders, you only take the over production and not steal the food from the calf and the cows live a good life then you could argue that the milk is vegan. But milk is not produced like that so milk is not vegan.