Blue honey... A mistery solved

Early 2000’s, French beekeepers were astonished when their bees started to produce thick, blue and green honey.

Knowing that bee’s don’t always forage were you’d like them to, an investigation was conducted.  The result is that their bees were feeding on the colorful shells of M&M. A manufacturing plant was located only 4 km away. Now the problem has been solved and the factory took stricter measures to keep any waste stored.

It would be impossible to completely understand how bees were attracted to this confectionery item. What we know so far is that, bees can forage up to 5 km from their hive following scent signals carried in the air. Flowers also offer color and pattern to make themselves attractive from a distance. Bees perceive a slightly different spectrum of color than humans do. This bee vision attracts the pollinators to brilliant color flowers and their nectar. Humans base their color combinations on red, blue and green, while bees base their colors on ultraviolet light, blue and green. This is the reason why bees can’t see the color red. Bees can see blue-green, blue, violet, and “bee’s purple.” Bee’s purple is a combination of yellow and ultraviolet light. According to scientists, the most likely colors to attract bees are purple, violet and blue.

There is also a behavior phenomenon occurring for bees, the flower constancy. In which  bees continue to visit a particular flower, usually based on color and no other attributes. A theory for it, is that bee’s memory is just not big enough to retrain once it has memorized the location of a particular forage source.

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Honey, much more than just a sweetener