French Bees Produce Blue and Green Honey

jones_supa writes "Since August, beekeepers around the town of Ribeauville in the region of Alsace, France have seen their bees starting to produce honey in an odd blue or green color. Mystified, the beekeepers embarked on an investigation and discovered that a biogas plant 4 km away has been processing waste from a plant producing colorful M&M candies. Subsequently the bees had been carrying the waste to their nests. Agrivalor, the company operating the biogas plant, said it had tried to address the problem after being notified of it by the beekeepers. 'We discovered the problem at the same time they did. We quickly put in place a procedure to stop it,' told Philippe Meinrad, co-manager of Agrivalor."

Comments

I'd buy it!

[loonwings]

Don't say it's unsellable! Mark it up, partner with Mars, and tell me where I can buy some.

Re:I'd buy it!

[ccandreva]

Agreed. Sound like what they need is a marketing person. If it does taste the same, don't look at it as waste, look at it as a limited time premium product !

Re:I'd buy it!

[PlusFiveTroll]

Brilliant Blue FCF Honey and Ketchup Yay!

Re:I'd buy it!

[houghi]

I thought I would never see the day that /. asks for marketing people to step in and save the day.
Bet Beelzebub is learning to play broomball.

Re:I'd buy it!

[Swistak]

Not all wastes are equal. "Wate" in this case might be simply M&M that are somehow damaged (not perfectly shaped), and are thrown out becouse who would eat square M&M right?

why no pics?

[Anonymous Coward]

This story is worthless without pictures. I mean, it's about colors, goddamn it! I wanna see this so-called blue and green honey, and judge for myself whether it is actually blue or green.

Re:why no pics?

[houghi]

I'm colorblind, you insensitive clod.

Re:why no pics?

[innocent_white_lamb]

Pics:

http://nationalpostnews.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/colourful-honey-france.jpg

http://nationalpostnews.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/colourful-honey.jpg

http://nationalpostnews.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/green-honey-france.jpg

From this article:
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/10/05/french-beekeepers-blame-mms-candy-for-mysterious-blue-and-green-honey/

Video (with pics)

[Anonymous Coward]

The BBC has video, where you can actually see it:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19840555

Re:Video (with pics)

[alexhs]

There also are photos from a local newspaper (if you use noscript, allow www.lalsace.fr, there are 12 photos, not only one).

Google Image in French has a few others.
I like the green one.

Also, this is not innocuous, as the queen bees have stopped to lay eggs due to the unusual food (source in French).

Finally, clickable link for the BBC video, for the lazy :)

(Aside note : Slashdot also removes UTF-8 in URLs, I had to use %E9 instead of é.)

Hell yeah!

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems to me that different colored honey would be a big seller.

Or at the very least, use it as a sweetener in confections? Foods that would otherwise have food coloring added.

That honey doesn't have to go to waste.

And if I were a bee and saw my hard work go down the toilet, I'd be buzzing mad!

Re:Hell yeah!

[K. S. Kyosuke]

The only problem is that this honey is quite rare. You'd only see it in shops once in a blue honeymoon.

In Brooklyn, maraschino cherries made them red

[doug141]

story here http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/nyregion/30bigcity.html?_r=0

And what about other chemicals?

[KiloByte]

Note how it made the news only because there is a visible effect. Let's just think how many other honey plantations and other crops were contaminated in ways that don't colour the produce.

That's a feature, not a bug!

[Geoffrey.landis]

Wow-- that's a feature, not a bug.

(Well, the bees themselves are bugs.)

Re:That's a feature, not a bug!

[DarwinSurvivor]

No, they're insects.