Frivolous AHC- Technicolor Honey

[SinghKing]

Mars Incorporated has proclaimed that “Chocolate is better in color” with its M&Ms. But French beekeepers may beg to differ on that.

Since August (2012), beekeepers near the town of Ribeauville, in the northeastern region of Alsace, have been reporting that their bees are producing honey in the particularly vivid hues of opaque dark brown, blue and green. An investigation by beekeepers in the town of Ribeauville (map) uncovered the cause of the problem: Instead of collecting nectar from flowers, local bees were feeding on remnants of colored M&M candy shells, which were being processed by a biogas plant roughly 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) away from their apiaries, operated by the company Agrivalor.

A statement from Agrivalor that appeared in the French newspaper Le Monde said the company would clean its containers and store waste in airtight containers to prevent bees from reaching it. “We quickly put in place a procedure to stop it,” Philippe Meinrad, co-manager of Agrivalor, told Reuters.

France generates 18,330 tons of honey per year, making it one of the largest honey producers in the European Union. In Alsace alone, about 2,400 beekeepers manage 35,000 colonies, which produce about 1,000 tons of the stuff per year. However, France hasn’t been spared by the largely unexplained decrease in the world bee population in recent years, Reuters reported.

Gill Maclean, a spokesperson for the British Beekeepers’ Association, told the BBC that the harsh winter of 2011-2012 may have affected bees’ ability to forage. This could be a reason why the bees sought out the alternate sugar. “Bees are clever enough to know where the best sources of sugar are, if there are no others available,” Maclean told the BBC.

However, consumers won’t see blue or green honey on store shelves anytime soon. Alain Frieh, president of the apiculturists’ union, told Reuters the only similarity between regular honey and their bees’ M&M-tainted byproducts would be the taste. “For me, it’s not honey,” Frieh told Reuters. “It’s not sellable.”

This isn't the first case of bees producing colored "honey." In 2010, the New York Times reported that bees kept in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook were producing red goo, reminiscent of cough syrup. As it turns out, local bees were heading over to a nearby factory that produced maraschino cherries to eat instead of foraging in the gardens of their keepers.

"Honeybees will look for resources wherever they can find them," said Dino Martins, a Kenyan entomologist and National Geographic Emerging Explorer. (National Geographic News is part of the National Geographic Society.) "Just like us humans, they have a sweet tooth as they seek out nectar for making their honey."

So, for this AHC, can you make this happen elsewhere considerably earlier, get professional beekeepers producing numerous varieties of multi-colored honey such as these, and have the production of these colored varieties of honey develop into a highly lucrative commercial industry?

 

[asnys]

This is an extremely interesting idea. I have no idea how to accomplish it, not knowing anything about the apiary industry (unless Dwarf Fortress counts ).

If all you want is weird-colored honey, I would guess you could accomplish that with food coloring, but that hardly counts. To produce something with a different taste, I would guess you'd have to do a lot of expensive, difficult experiments, feeding bees different foodstuffs and seeing what comes out the other end, until eventually you find something palatable. That's just my guess; like I said, I know nothing about this. Maybe some rich European aristocrat decides to make this a hobby project, and eventually strikes blue gold?

 

[Driftless]

I'm not sure how this connects, but there is a pandemic condition impacting honeybees in Europe and North America "Colony Collapse Disorder". There is great concern in some agricultural circles from the perspective that bees are primary pollinators of many fruits.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder

 

[SinghKing]

This is an extremely interesting idea. I have no idea how to accomplish it, not knowing anything about the apiary industry (unless Dwarf Fortress counts ).

If all you want is weird-colored honey, I would guess you could accomplish that with food coloring, but that hardly counts. To produce something with a different taste, I would guess you'd have to do a lot of expensive, difficult experiments, feeding bees different foodstuffs and seeing what comes out the other end, until eventually you find something palatable. That's just my guess; like I said, I know nothing about this. Maybe some rich European aristocrat decides to make this a hobby project, and eventually strikes blue gold?

My thoughts; perhaps the Rowntrees in the city of York, after they began producing Smarties at their Haxby Road Factory (1882, as 'Chocolate Beans'), could have kicked it off. What if they discarded enough of the remnants of the colored candy shells from the unsatisfactory batches of their 'Smarties' in a similar fashion, and local beekeepers begin reporting the same strange phenomenon? Could Seebohm Rowntree be inclined to investigate the origins of the new multi-coloured honey varieties in his small research and testing laboratory (built in 1889 IOTL, for the purpose of analysing ingredients and rival company products); and mightn't he- or anyone else- manage to make the connection, and realise that the bees' consumption of the coloured candy is the source?

Rowntree & Co always performed relatively poorly in the chocolate industry IOTL, particularly from 1914 onwards, as British public preference continued to move away from dark chocolate and towards milk chocolate (with Joseph Rowntree dismissing the growing market for milk chocolate as a fad, until he was suceeded as chairman by his son Seebohm in 1923), which drove it to the verge of bankruptcy by 1930. However, if the phenomenon of multi-coloured honey does emerge in and around York ITTL, and if Rowntree & Co do manage to work out the cause during this time period, could it be plausible for them to take a very big interest in the potentially lucrative multi-coloured honey, buying out the beekeepers, and commencing the production and marketing of the new, amazingly colourful honey varieties under the Rowntree's label?

 

[asnys]

My thoughts; perhaps the Rowntrees in the city of York, after they began producing Smarties at their Haxby Road Factory (1882, as 'Chocolate Beans')? What if they discard enough of the remnants of the colored candy shells from the unsatisfactory batches of their 'Smarties' in a similar fashion, and local beekeepers begin reporting the same strange phenomenon? Could Seebohm Rowntree be inclined to investigate the origins of the new multi-coloured honey varieties in his small research and testing laboratory (built in 1889 IOTL, for the purpose of analysing ingredients and rival company products); and mightn't he- or anyone else- manage to make the connection, and realise that the bees' consumption of the coloured candy is the source?

Rowntree & Co always performed relatively poorly in the chocolate industry IOTL, particularly from 1914 onwards, as British public preference continued to move away from dark chocolate and towards milk chocolate (with Joseph Rowntree dismissing the growing market for milk chocolate as a fad, until he was suceeded as chairman by his son Seebohm in 1923), which drove it to the verge of bankruptcy by 1930. However, if the phenomenon of multi-coloured honey does emerge in and around York ITTL, and if Rowntree & Co do manage to work out the cause during this time period, could it be plausible for them to take a very big interest in the potentially lucrative multi-coloured honey, buying out the beekeepers, and commencing the production and marketing of the new, amazingly colourful honey varieties under the Rowntree's label?

Would this really be viable as a mass-market product? I was imagining something more like elk cheese or heritage tomatoes, something for the aristocrats and the foodies, due to the expense of making sure bees only feed from what you want to feed them. But, like I said, I don't know anything about apiary, so I don't know if it would really be as difficult as all that.

 

[SinghKing]

Would this really be viable as a mass-market product? I was imagining something more like elk cheese or heritage tomatoes, something for the aristocrats and the foodies, due to the expense of making sure bees only feed from what you want to feed them. But, like I said, I don't know anything about apiary, so I don't know if it would really be as difficult as all that.

Probably not. But at this time of the turmoil for the company, particularly between 1918 and 1923, the Rowntree board was torn as to whether it should become a low turnover, high quality product company or a mass producer of cheaper lines. IOTL, they chose to keep pursuing the latter path. ITTL, if they chose to pursue the former path instead, the multi-colored honey could well become a very lucrative product for them.

 

[Driftless]

You would need to be real careful about the taste & smell of the honey too. Regular honey varies considerably in color, smell, and taste, depending on the primary source flowers the bees are visiting. i.e. in the US Basswood honey is very light colored and delicately scented, while buckwheat honey is dark and strong flavored

 

[Orville_third]

Not long ago, there were these bees:
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=174202