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Baffling purple honey found only in North Carolina

bbc.com

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Re: Baffling purple honey found only in North Carolina

#31

Post by foobarian »

tonyarkles wrote: post #17
taeric wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 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.

Cicadas 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!

As I always tell my kids, aren't you glad they are the size they are instead of the size of a car!

Re: Baffling purple honey found only in North Carolina

#33

Post by cainxinth »

Borrible wrote: post #3

Nice, looks tasty! So, Kudzu? Or Industrial waste like in France around 2012? https://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyle/blue-and-green-hon... 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_Physicoch...

In 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

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...

Re: Baffling purple honey found only in North Carolina

#34

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

Two4 wrote: post #7

any 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.

I seem to recall another story about colored honey (blue?) where the bees had been feeding on antifreeze - not recommended for eating.

Re: Baffling purple honey found only in North Carolina

#35

Post by pama »

cainxinth wrote: post #33
Borrible wrote: post #3

Nice, looks tasty! So, Kudzu? Or Industrial waste like in France around 2012? https://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyle/blue-and-green-hon... 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_Physicoch...

In 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 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...

Perhaps this was not unrelated after all, as the bee detectives might have sensed the smell of the flowers.

Re: Baffling purple honey found only in North Carolina

#36

Post by adamgordonbell »

The 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.

Re: Baffling purple honey found only in North Carolina

#37

Post by jerf »

ricardobeat wrote: post #18

Why 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.

The 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.

Re: Baffling purple honey found only in North Carolina

#38

Post by ceejayoz »

dabluecaboose wrote: post #4

Reminds 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 firef…

Same deal when we "discover" new ruins in the Central American rainforests; the locals are often very aware of their existence.

Re: Baffling purple honey found only in North Carolina

#39

Post by onychomys »

truenfel wrote: post #29

Funny 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.

I like honey pretty well, but I have no idea how I'd go through 6 pails of it a year. Did you use it in your coffee and also put it on toast every morning or something?
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