Blue honey

[marion.orca]

Can't find a link to this, but it was on this mornings news that some French Beekeepers have an apiary close to an M&M's sweet factory. The bees have somehow taken a liking to something near with the result that the beekeepers have been harvesting green and blue honey, which, apparently has a perfectly normal taste to it - if not a bit alien looking !

[marion.orca]

Here's a link - www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe19835847

[Mellifera Crofter]

I've heard similar stories before. I think it was green honey then from green cream soda. I've also heard about bees getting drunk on alcohol and that the other bees would not let them back in the hive until they've sobered up. I don't know if that's true. Might be a tall tale like the story about elephants getting drunk on marulas.

[Jon]

Not such a tall tale at times

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14842999

[marion.orca]

I like that story about the the bees getting drunk and having to sober up before getting back into the hive. Given that a hive is predominantly female - it would seem that us females have it right all along. Have we copied the bees or have the bees copied us ?

[HJBee]

Another Link via the Daily Mail too

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2212920/Mystery-French-bees-making-coloured-honey-solved--keepers-M-M-waste-plant-nearby.html

Seems they were feeding on left over sugar solution in containers accessible from the production of M&M's :p

[Don Ember]

In 'The Times' (Friday 3rd December 2010), appeared a story about bees moved from Georgia to the heart of New York to do their thing. The trouble was that their idea of foraging was to visit the vats of manufactured cherry juice in Della's Maraschino Cherries Company. They returned, to a range of hives, covered in a red sticky substance and the 'honey' was bright red and tasted metallic, with a hint of cherry.

[chris]

This conjures up all sorts of possibilities for a marketing wizz kid.

[GRIZZLY]

The same thing happened a few years ago when a beekeeper near to a Cadburys plant reported his honey tasting of caramel. Cadburys denied that it was from their works as they said that the plant was insect proof. The bees soon proved Cadburys wrong however.

[Neils]

It's obviously a good year for flavoured honey:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/9666608/Bees-make-After-Eight-honey-after-eating-mint-fondant.html

I say nothing about the obvious idiosyncrasies in the article.

[Mellifera Crofter]

Do you mean that 'little guy' hunting for forage and reporting back to 'his' mates? Paul Snowden must have been nervous being interviewed. He is an excellent beehive maker. I have a couple of his hives.
Kitta

[Neils]

I had assumed it was the journalist that messed up rather than Paul :)

[Mellifera Crofter]

Must be! I'm sure.

[Trog]

Ah, yes. My mum told me about the mint flavoured honey today. She was saying how nice our own honey was.