French Bees Produce Blue Honey

[Nutso]

Looks yucky.

http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/10/05/fre ... lue-honey/

Mars Incorporated has proclaimed that “Chocolate is better in color” with its M&Ms. But French beekeepers may beg to differ on that.

Since August, beekeepers near the town of Ribeauville, in the northeastern region of Alsace, have been reporting their bees are producing blue and green honey, according to Reuters. And they’ve traced the cause back to a biogas plant that processes waste from an M&Ms factory.

Bees are apparently picking up vibrantly colored, sugary waste from the plant, operated by the company Agrivalor some 2.5 miles away from their apiaries. A statement from Agrivalor that appeared in the French newspaper Le Monde said the company would clean its containers and store waste in airtight containers to prevent bees from reaching it.

“We quickly put in place a procedure to stop it,” Philippe Meinrad, co-manager of Agrivalor, told Reuters.

France generates 18,330 tons of honey per year, making it one of the largest honey producers in the European Union. In Alsace alone, about 2,400 beekeepers manage 35,000 colonies, which produce about 1,000 tons of the stuff per year. However, France hasn’t been spared by the largely unexplained decrease in the world bee population in recent years, Reuters reported.

Gill Maclean, a spokesperson for the British Beekeepers’ Association, told the BBC that the harsh winter of 2011-2012 may have affected bees’ ability to forage. This could be a reason why the bees sought out the alternate sugar.

“Bees are clever enough to know where the best sources of sugar are, if there are no others available,” Maclean told the BBC.

Rest assured: Consumers won’t see blue honey on store shelves anytime soon. Alain Frieh, president of the apiculturists’ union, told Reuters the only similarity between regular honey and their bees’ M&M-tainted byproducts might be taste.

“For me, it’s not honey,” Frieh told Reuters. “It’s not sellable.”

I don't understand why blue or green, and not red or orange?

[Nutso]

Whoa! Red Honey?!
http://fox13now.com/2013/09/04/appearan ... s-worried/
Video to story in link.

SALT LAKE CITY — Beekeepers in three counties said they’re harvesting red honey, and the turn of events has some people worried.

“This is an extremely unusual circumstance,” said Larry Lewis, spokesperson for the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food.

Lewis said the state issued an advisory to beekeepers Wednesday, “To not mix this red honey with their regular product, because this red honey might not be in fact honey.”

Lewis said state law defines honey as a product produced by a bee that forages on plants and flowers, but it looks like some bees in Salt Lake, Davis and Utah counties have been foraging on hard candy.

“Specifically, it looked like it might be candy cane,” said William Burnett, who is a Utah County Bee Inspector.

Burnett said beekeepers in his county have been harvesting red honey for the last two months, but they had no idea where it was coming from until just recently when a local beekeeper came forward and said he’d been feeding his bees a mixture of crushed hard candy and water.

Bees from neighboring farms got into the mixture, collecting sugar water instead of nectar and taking it back to the hive. The result, Burnett said, is a red syrupy substance that tastes more like cough syrup than honey.

“Quite frankly, it doesn’t taste very good if you’re storing simple sugar in the hive,” Burnett said. “You want the flavor of the flowers. You want the pollen. You want the things that make honey honey to be there.”

Burnett said, as far as he knows, the contaminated honey hasn’t made it into the food supply.

Lewis said state officials have no reason to believe the red honey is unhealthy, but they’re running tests. And they’re adamant about the warning to farmers to keep it out of their regular harvest.

“We’re cautious and concerned that the product is not a real honey, and might affect the economic stability of Utah beekeepers,” Lewis said.

To summarize, an idiot fed his bees and mixture of water and crushed up red candy cane and some of those bees got loose and mixed with other hives. Red honey tastes like cough syrup.

[McAvoy]

Ehhh... I like my honey a nice yellowish orangy color. Not up for some crazy colors.

[Teaos]

Kinda awesome.