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#Post#: 318014--------------------------------------------------
The baffling purple honey found only in North Carolina
By: Thetis099 Date: April 18, 2025, 9:32 am
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This is fascinating! I had no idea this purple honey existed
even though I come from a beekeeping family.
When my father used the hummingbird nectar mix that contained
red dye in our feeders back in the early 1980s, the bees would
visit the feeders. I used to watch the bees around the edge of
their water tray, and I could see which workers had filled up on
the hummingbird feeder nectar because their abdomens would be
red. The number of bees with red abdomens at the water tray was
a small portion of the total number of bees. My father read
somewhere that red dye probably wasn't good for hummingbirds and
stopped using the red nectar mix at some point. I don't have
any memory of this red dye changing the color of the honey, it
was always amber.
As I was reading I mentally shot down their kudzu vine pollen
theory because that shit is everywhere throughout the southeast,
so there should be a lot more purple honey from other locations.
I agree the bees most likely don't have the ability to pierce
berries with their mandibles, but, what if other
insects/birds/mammals leave open berries or mustang grapes or
other purple pigmented fruit allowing the bees to get to the
juice? Our bees definitely got all over the plums on our trees
that had been pecked open by birds. I also read that the purple
honey tastes sweeter than amber honey. I think that is a clue
berry or some other fruit juice may be involved.
HTML https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20250417-the-baffling-purple-honey-found-only-in-north-carolina
I went looking for journal articles to see if anyone had
analyzed the chemical composition of the purple honey and found
this abstract from Palynology published last year. I can't get
the whole article for free, it is too recent. These
palynologists (those who study pollen and spores) have ideas:
The Palynology of Purple Honey: Kudzu Dismissed,
Aluminum-Sourwood Reaction and Other Sources Behind Color
Plausible
HTML https://bioone.org/journals/palynology/volume-48/issue-3/01916122.2024.2317224/The-Palynology-of-Purple-Honey--Kudzu-Dismissed-Aluminum-Sourwood/10.1080/01916122.2024.2317224.short
#Post#: 318038--------------------------------------------------
Re: The baffling purple honey found only in North Carolina
By: MidwestmikkiJ Date: April 18, 2025, 10:30 am
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It would seem to me that the fact that its appearance isn’t
entirely predictable would be a clue.
Kudzu vines in addition to being everywhere must be predictable
as would most of the berries, etc.
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