Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Baffling purple honey found only in North Carolina

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 55 posts

Re: Baffling purple honey found only in North Carolina

#41

Post by 1234letshaveatw »

taeric wrote: post #6
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…

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.

what area are you located in now? We have fireflies in Michigan, cicadas as well

Re: Baffling purple honey found only in North Carolina

#42

Post by taeric »

1234letshaveatw wrote: post #41
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.

what area are you located in now? We have fireflies in Michigan, cicadas as well

Pacific Northwest. And fair, I should have said east coast, not just south.

Re: Baffling purple honey found only in North Carolina

#43

Post by Matticus_Rex »

taeric wrote: post #42
1234letshaveatw wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what area are you located in now? We have fireflies in Michigan, cicadas as well

Pacific Northwest. And fair, I should have said east coast, not just south.

There are fireflies in every state except Hawaii. There are more east of the Mississippi and in the south generally, but anywhere with water has some (including river valleys in arid states).

Re: Baffling purple honey found only in North Carolina

#44

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

taeric wrote: post #6
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…

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.

How far north are you? We get them around Albany, NY. The big thing is having a forest-meadow boundary, where fallen leaves aren't removed. If you're surrounded by grass lawns & concrete where people rake & remove the leaves fireflies could lay their eggs in, you won't get fireflies.

Re: Baffling purple honey found only in North Carolina

#45

Post by searine »

paulorlando wrote: post #11

Reminds 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.

Which led to the discovery of a marijuana grow operation below the factory.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/27/nyregion/secret-marijuana...

Re: Baffling purple honey found only in North Carolina

#47

Post by truenfel »

onychomys wrote: post #39
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?

Yep. I have a sweet tooth.

Re: Baffling purple honey found only in North Carolina

#48

Post by js2 »

jerf wrote: post #37
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 thr…

An 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/

Re: Baffling purple honey found only in North Carolina

#49

Post by js2 »

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...

An NC state professor previously determined it's aluminum reacting with acid in the bees' stomachs:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46501058

Re: Baffling purple honey found only in North Carolina

#50

Post by taeric »

Matticus_Rex wrote: post #43
taeric wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pacific Northwest. And fair, I should have said east coast, not just south.

There are fireflies in every state except Hawaii. There are more east of the Mississippi and in the south generally, but anywhere with water has some (including river valleys in arid states).

I had to google this. If you count non-flashing bugs as fireflies, sure. Nothing like the typical experience in my backyard when I lived in Alabama. They are very different bugs.

Still, neat, to be sure. Indeed, my point in the original post was that I find the wildlife out here in the PNW to be very fun and I like all of the wildlife we have. Banana slugs, as a fun example.

Post reply on HN