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Baffling purple honey found only in North Carolina
- codevark 10mo ago[dead]
- Borrible 10mo agoNice, looks tasty! So, Kudzu? Or Industrial waste like in France around 2012? https://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyle/blue-and-green-honey-makes-french-beekeepers-see-red-idUSBRE8930MR/ https://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyle/blue-and-green-hon... https://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyle/blue-and-green-honey-makes-french-beekeepers-see-red-idUSBRE8930MR/ https://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyle/blue-and-green-hon... And on Banggi, a Malaysian island, there is supposedly green honey! https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361629042_Physicochemical_Properties_of_a_New_Green_Honey_from_Banggi_Island_Sabah https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361629042_Physicoch...
- cainxinth 9mo agoIn NYC, they found red honey which was coming from bees drinking at a maraschino cherry factory: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/nyregion/30bigcity.html https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/nyregion/30bigcity.html Unrelated, but that led to the police finding a marijuana grow operation in the basement: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/27/nyregion/secret-marijuana-farm-beneath-brooklyn-cherry-factory-leaves-many-mysteries.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/27/nyregion/secret-marijuana...
- pama 9mo agoPerhaps this was not unrelated after all, as the bee detectives might have sensed the smell of the flowers.
- Rebelgecko 9mo agoThe New Yorker article about it also has some additional details: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/23/the-maraschino-moguls-secret-life https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/23/the-maraschino...
- js2 9mo agoAn NC state professor previously determined it's aluminum reacting with acid in the bees' stomachs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46501058 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46501058
- dabluecaboose 9mo agoReminds me of the "discovery" of synchronous fireflies in 1990: >Scientists got wise to the presence of synchronous fireflies in the U.S. in the 1990’s, thanks to the efforts of Faust, a citizen naturalist. “Growing up in east Tennessee, we called them lightning bugs. They're just part of summer,” she says. In the early 1990’s, Faust read an article in a science news magazine that said there were no synchronous fireflies in the Western Hemisphere. “I thought, ‘Ours are synchronous – who do I tell this to?’” she recalls. She wrote a letter to researchers, who came to Tennessee and studied those fireflies for the next twenty years. [src] https://www.npr.org/2024/05/24/g-s1-935/synchronous-fireflies-congaree-endangered https://www.npr.org/2024/05/24/g-s1-935/synchronous-fireflie... There's a lot of stuff in the world that's unique and special, but isn't common knowledge on the internet. I think more people should go out and look around for themselves!
- taeric 9mo agoI didn't realize all fireflies didn't tend to synchronized. Fun read. Fireflies are one of the only "bugs" from the south that I miss. Cicadas, I suppose, have a bit of a soft spot with me. Everything else... nope.
- tonyarkles 9mo agoCicadas are so bizarre. A couple of summers ago I was around Des Moines and Ames, IA and was completely baffled by the strange noise that seemed to be everywhere and yet impossible to localize. After a few days I heard someone talking about the cicadas and learned something new!
- chasil 9mo agoThese effects can arise from much more mundane sources. https://www.npr.org/2012/10/05/162347192/the-last-word-in-business https://www.npr.org/2012/10/05/162347192/the-last-word-in-bu...
- rcyeh 9mo agoSimilarly: "The Mystery of the Red Bees of Red Hook" https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/nyregion/30bigcity.html https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/nyregion/30bigcity.html https://archive.ph/vQkwl https://archive.ph/vQkwl
- Two4 9mo agoany soft drink plants in the area? A bottler near where I used to stay got caught dumping out expired flavourant packs when honey in the area started turning red.
- senectus1 9mo agooh great... grape flavored honey...
- RobotToaster 9mo agoFrom the article >Flavour-wise, she says, "to my untrained palate, the honey really does taste purple, in a grape-y sort of way". Oh no
- TheAdamist 9mo agoKudzu flowers supposedly have a grape like flavor. I just had a beer made with them from fonta flora in NC and you could vaguely taste it. Although unsure if it was my imagination. Kudzu flowers were listed as one of the possibilities in the article.
- potato3732842 9mo agoIt could still be placebo effect and/or whatever makes purple/red grapes their deep color having an influence on the flavor and this being common to both purples rather than spilled Fanta. The article mentions kudzu which is also purple and allegedly vaguely grape like. Basically "this bloody mary sure does have a hint of pizza to it" but one level lower (chemical level rather than the tomato ingredient level).
- Two4 9mo agoA bit of digging, and it turns out there's a Coca-cola bottler in Aberdeen, the same area as Dees Bees Apiary. I'm willing to bet that purple honey coincides with grape Fanta spills or dumps
- deleted 9mo ago
- paulorlando 9mo agoReminds me of the story about the red (and not great tasting) honey bees were making in Brooklyn... from sipping up liquid from the local maraschino cherry factory.
- searine 9mo agoWhich led to the discovery of a marijuana grow operation below the factory. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/27/nyregion/secret-marijuana-farm-beneath-brooklyn-cherry-factory-leaves-many-mysteries.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/27/nyregion/secret-marijuana...
- Herodotus38 9mo agoThere’s a hopefully unrelated concept called purple urine bag syndrome I have seen. Not completely understood either but this paper thinks due to a combination of dietary tryptophan breakdown from constipation and colonic E coli load, urinary bacteria, and reaction with the plastic tubing of the catheter and bag. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3894016/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3894016/
- ricardobeat 9mo agoWhy hasn’t the honey been tested, if this has happened for such a long time? I’d bet on some kind of contamination as others have already mentioned.
- jey 9mo agoYeah maybe time to send a sample to the “mass spec everything” guy
- ljsprague 9mo agoThis guy, yeah?: https://www.youtube.com/@MassSpecEverything https://www.youtube.com/@MassSpecEverything
- jerf 9mo agoThe press love to write this "gee whiz" sort of story where nobody knows anything and everyone is baffled about everything isn't that just so amazing, but I'm sure the reason why the honey itself is purple is not a mystery and someone has tested it. The question is how the purple got into the honey, not what it is. It doesn't fit into the mystery storyline they want to write. Any sort of science reporting is shot through with this sort of thing.
- js2 9mo agoAn NC State professor figured it out in the 1970s[^1]: > At N.C. State University, Professor John Ambrose, an entomologist and assistant vice provost of undergraduate affairs and director of N.C. State’s First Year College program, performed a series of tests in the 1970s to pinpoint the source of the blue honey. The result: nothing is what it seems. [...] > Ambrose concluded that some of that aluminum ended up in the flowers’ nectar, was transferred to the hive, then added to the bees’ acidic digestive fluid to make blue honey. Unfortunately no one believes him and he's no longer around to defend himself: > This story appeared in the April 2010 issue of Our State. Professor John Ambrose died in January 2015 after a short battle with brain cancer. [^1]: https://www.ourstate.com/blue-honey/ https://www.ourstate.com/blue-honey/
- toxicwaste 9mo agoAnd bees can also make radioactive honey: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/23/honey-nuclear-bomb-tests-fallout https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/23/honey-nuclea...
- FlamingMoe 9mo agoFun fact about North Carolina: Venus Fly Traps only grow naturally within about a 75-mile radius around Wilmington, NC.
- unnamed76ri 9mo agoJust a couple days ago I was able to try white honey from Montana. I don’t believe there is any rarity to it but it was new to me and tasted great.
- truenfel 9mo agoFunny story: I came across some money and instead of buying Bitcoin (which at the time was selling for ~$30) I bought 6 big pails of honey from a local farm. Honey never goes bad, and during an economic collapse it would easily have the same value as Bitcoin. I ended up eating all of it in a year instead.
- js2 9mo agoHere's an article from 2010 I submitted a few years ago along with other links I was able to dig up at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32810786 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32810786
- adamgordonbell 9mo agoThe book "All the Colors of the Dark" has a plot line around rare purple honey being a sort of treasure map to a place in North Carolina. I thought it was an odd made-up plot point. I guess it turns out it was not. Despite not liking that part of the plot, it was a beautifully written book, that permanently changed some of my reading habit's.
- NoSalt 9mo agoIs there an M&M plant nearby??? https://www.npr.org/2012/10/05/162347192/the-last-word-in-business https://www.npr.org/2012/10/05/162347192/the-last-word-in-bu...
- snitzr 9mo agoIf it's in North Carolina, maybe it's Cheerwine.
- xg15 9mo agoWasn't there also drug honey a few weeks ago? Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45803097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45803097 We also got blue honey ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32801032 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32801032 ) and cannabis honey ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11221651 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11221651 )
- anfilt 9mo agoOkay do a chemical analysis? I would want that done anyways to know if its safe eat depending on the chemical causing the color.