[dogsoldier13]

today i was going into the grocery store and passed a paper machine,on the front page was a big picture of a guy holding a big piece of blue honey comb,i put in my 50 cents and got the last paper in the machine,i have never heard of blue honey and the 2 page article was very interesting,it seems that hucklberries are the reason for blue honey,it is rare and could show up in any hive of bees,the paper was the june 13th 09 issue of the fayetteville observer,they say it is very delicious and tatstes like blueberries. :idea:

 

[Iddee]

If he knows where it comes from, he is smarter than the bee scientists at all the universities. It has been a conversation piece for many years, but it's source has never been discovered. It is mostly found between fayetteville and the coast, in North Carolina.
I have a pint of it if you want to try it the next time you visit.

 

[dogsoldier13]

sounds great,im looking forward to the next visit

 

[Iddee]

Door's wide open.

 

[BjornBee]

Peppermint flavored, odd colors, licorice after taste.....many possibilites and confirmed types of honey out there. Have a bottling plant near by? How about a confectionary company? Just about any business that discards various sugar containers or anything else the bees could feed on could cause different honey.

 

[Iddee]

The article begins....

>>>> No one is quite sure when.

No one is quite sure where.

And after decades of studying, experts still disagree on why.

But almost every year, somewhere in the Sandhills of North Carolina, a few lucky beekeepers strike blue gold.<<<<

Then it goes on to discuss the huckleberry as fact, when it is still a total mystery.

Here is the article... http://www.fayobserver.com/Articles/200 ... 09180.aspx

Sanford and Kevin are Father and son, who have studied bees and worked hard to become master beekeepers in an unusually short period of time. My admiration and respect go out to both of them, but I think they are a bit too confident as to the source of blue honey.

 

[dogsoldier13]

so its still magic

 

[Charles]

I have a pint of it if you want to try it the next time you visit.

How is it? Taste any different than regular honey from the same area?

 

[Iddee]

45 years of cigarettes, cigars and chewing tobacco, I don't taste anything. It all tastes like honey.

 

[GrayGuy]

Oh honey, why so blue? French beehives take a mysterious colorful turn

This is currently happening in France:
http://photoblog.nbcnews.com/_news/...beehives-take-a-mysterious-colorful-turn?lite

 

[Omie]

Hmm... I'll pass on the blue 'honey', thanks.

 

[Crofter]

Old "Stompin' Tom Conners" made a song about a sasquatch playing hopscotch, too: if you can make money doing it, its all good!

 

[GrayGuy]

I don't think you guys read the linked article about France blue green honey. They are not doing it on purpose, it has to do with a M&M processing plant and the bees eating the sugar coating.

 

[Barbarian]

Not just France

The grapevine has it that a compensation/fine of two million euros has been applied at the biomass plant.

With the poor summer weather some UK bees have been visiting the local candy/sweet factories. Contaminated 'honey' has been reported at York and Halifax. The hive stores in Halifax are a variety of colours and consistency with a strong smell of cough sweets. Bees are no longer coughing :grin:

 

[Omie]

Dead bees don't cough much.

 

[Mama Beek]

the North Carolina blue honey looks nothing like that stuff in France...and the taste is like a cross between cotton candy and grape soda, only MUCH better We got at least a few quarts of it every year when we were living in the sandhills....and we are still 100% confident that there were no artificial coloring sources within the range of our bees. The real blue/purple honey is simply amazing stuff...we've been VERY tempted to try to keep a hive or two out there just to have some of it again!

There are a few older posts about the stuff...we never saw it when there were any kind of berries for the bees to feed on, in fact we only saw it during the summer dearth when the bees were left to the soybeans, early cotton blooms (few and far between) and the odd flower gardens. Someone from UNC once told us that it could be the Titi trees...and we occasionally did see a few of those blooming not far from the house, but not really enough to justify the quantity of honey we would get. It still is a sweet mystery to us.

There's the link to the thread with a pic or two.

http://www.beekeepingforums.com/threads/1513-Real-Purple-Honey?highlight=purple+honey

 

[Omie]

Has anyone checked out the local candy manufacturers? Might be good to see if syrups and candy by-products are properly sealed off from bees during the summer bloom dearth months, when the blue nectar is being brought in by local bees. That would definitely create a honey taste of cotton candy and grape soda, both of which taste like artificial flavors: http://www.yellowpages.com/southern-pines-nc/candy-confectionery

 

[Mama Beek]

Omie, I can't speak for any of the other folks who kept bees there...but we lived much too far away from any industrial anything to have had that problem. Our blue honey was 100% natural, made by the bees and God

 

[riverrat]

I still have some of the purple honey from baby keep only use a little bit on special occasions after almost 2 years it still has not crystalized

 

[PerryBee]

I still have some of the purple honey from baby keep only use a little bit on special occasions after almost 2 years it still has not crystalized

I remember that, you out bid everyone to get it! :thumbsup: Special stuff I bet!