Why hasn’t the honey been tested, if this has happened for such a long time?

I’d bet on some kind of contamination as others have already mentioned.

jerf 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

The press love to write this "gee whiz" sort of story where nobody knows anything and everyone is baffled about everything isn't that just so amazing, but I'm sure the reason why the honey itself is purple is not a mystery and someone has tested it. The question is how the purple got into the honey, not what it is. It doesn't fit into the mystery storyline they want to write.

Any sort of science reporting is shot through with this sort of thing.

	▲	js2 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		An NC State professor figured it out in the 1970s[^1]: > At N.C. State University, Professor John Ambrose, an entomologist and assistant vice provost of undergraduate affairs and director of N.C. State’s First Year College program, performed a series of tests in the 1970s to pinpoint the source of the blue honey. The result: nothing is what it seems. [...] > Ambrose concluded that some of that aluminum ended up in the flowers’ nectar, was transferred to the hive, then added to the bees’ acidic digestive fluid to make blue honey. Unfortunately no one believes him and he's no longer around to defend himself: > This story appeared in the April 2010 issue of Our State. Professor John Ambrose died in January 2015 after a short battle with brain cancer. [^1]: https://www.ourstate.com/blue-honey/

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jey 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah maybe time to send a sample to the “mass spec everything” guy

	▲	ljsprague 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		This guy, yeah?: https://www.youtube.com/@MassSpecEverything