Rainbow Colored Honey Anyone?
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The small town of Ribeauville that lies on a scenic wine route southwest of Strasbourg, France is known for two things - Its vineyards and 35,000 bee colonies that produce more than 1,000 metric tons of delicious amber honey each year. However, since August, while the honey has been as delicious as ever, it has lost its amber hue and instead taken on strange shades of blue, green and even red!
Mystified, the beekeepers embarked on an investigation to see what was causing the sudden change in color. While it took a few months, they believe the mystery has finally been solved. Turns out that just about 2.5 miles away from the hives lies a biogas station which processes waste from a Mars confectionery plant that manufactures - You guessed it - brightly colored M&M's!
The British Beekeepers Association believes that due to a harsh 2011-2012 winter, the bees had a hard time foraging for honey, leading them to look for alternate sources of sugar. That's probably when they discovered the colorful sweet liquid waste that the company stored in large bins outside the plant.
The biogas company has now changed their procedures so that any incoming waste is stored in covered rooms to which the bees have no access to. While that will definitely help going forward, the poor beekeepers are scratching their heads about what to do with all the colored M&M honey that nobody wants to purchase.
The news is not particularly good for the rest of us as well. With bee colonies disappearing all around the world, the golden liquid is quite precious to begin with - Losing more, just adds to the dire situation.
Resources: news.yahoo.com,dailymail.co.uk
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526 Comments
- MMS Alyssa s6-7about 12 yearsYou can never judge a book by its cover. If you tried the honey first, you never know you might actually like it. That is why I think this article is very interesting to me. I would try this honey first if I were them.
- MMSJoshuaP11about 12 yearsBees in Ribeauville made colored honey such as Blue, Green, and Red. This happened because the harsh winter of 2011-2012 made it hard for bees to find honey this made them look for a different source sugar. This sugar is M&Ms. The bees got the M&M from a Mars confectoinery plant that manufactures M&Ms. My thought on this article is I want to try this honey. My opinion is they should see if it is edible so people could buy and eat it. My connection to this is in my fridge we have a huge thing of honey. In conclusion I liked this article, and I want to try this honey!
- Samabout 12 yearsWhy did you do that.
mangomooncakeabout 12 yearsMaybe those bees hate M&Ms. Maybe they love sweet, lovely honey more! So don't cut down trees,do the oppisite!- i am awesome!!!about 12 yearsrainbow honey gets kids to have honey
- labout 12 yearscccccccccoooooooooooollllllllll
- supabout 12 yearssup
- zabout 12 yearsthis is mean
- mmsMichaellaW11about 12 yearsI think it's pretty funny how they have colored honey. I didn't know that 35,000 bee colonies produce 1,000 metric ton's of amber honey each year. I think it's pretty interesting how they got the colored honey. I think it's kind of gross that there's colored honey, because it doesn't look to good to eat. I think this is a pretty interesting article.
- nameabout 12 yearsi have never tasted honey but it loks good, LOL
