Red honey in Utah

[Janice 3,991]

“Red” honey is turning up in commercial hives in multiple counties in Utah, causing losses already in the tens of thousands of dollars for business owners and prompting a state investigation.

State inspectors Wednesday said it is believed a yet-to-be-named large beekeeping operation began “open-feeding” bees with a concoction of crushed, rehydrated candy canes and other candy materials. Other bees discovered the caches and returned contaminated to surrounding bee yards.

http://www.ksl.com/?sid=26722269&nid=148

[Bron 2,780]

Awesome in its extreme stupidity, poor bees fancy being genetically modified by a candy cane:sick:

[Janice 3,991]

The mind boggles indeed. Fancy all those university scientists needing all that lab gear to do it.

[tristan 4,362]

we have had red, yellow, green honey before. i understand its from farmers feeding lollies to stock. unfortunately the bees get stuck to the sticky lollies.

[Janice 3,991]

I bet that's not good for the manuka market.

[tristan 4,362]

i would think coloured sugar would be easy to spot and be removed so it didn't contaminate the honey. that would be good for the manuka market.

[Stephen Black 428]

Which colour stands out the best ?

[tom sayn 1,261]

i know a beek here who feeds his bees with that lolly stuff.

he once sold me some hives. half a year later you could still smell the lolly aroma.

considering that there are a few hundred artificial flavors and colorings in that lolly sirup,

i find it surprising that you can feed it to bees and stock and why would you in the first place?

[Philip 2]

Dad says he used to feed seconds lolly like dry sugar to his the bees, and he would get all different colours of honey. I don't think it would hurt them, probably couldn't sell the honey, but you could use it as feed honey. Open feeding is that terrible idea though, as it can spreads disease.