Alrighty, then....time to let this post drift off the radar!

-dr

Aegis, this was such an interesting post, sucks to see you never found out the answer. I would definitely like some green honey, it looks like jade and probably even get a much higher price. I know nothing about bee keeping but found this post very intrigueing. The only thing I found from a google search was green honey in the Philippines caused by bees visiting the flowers of Calliandra calothyrsus. We do have in California a very close relative in Calliandra californica, maybe you could look into that, it may or may not be the answer. Let us know how it goes, keep us updated.

Here is a link that might be useful: green honey

Eggo,
Thanks for the interest and link. I do have Calliandra californica around, but not much. And more importantly, when I poked at the flowers there is nothing green...nice yellow and red. My best guess is that the bees found a trash can with some icee pops, or maybe cotton candy, and spent a couple of days hauling back the booty. There is some nectar around, but not much, so the bees are after anything they can find. I tried to steal some green pollen for future reference, but didn't see any more bees with green, and worry that maybe I was seeing things!

-dr

Aegis, bees on icee pops reminds me of my visit to southeast Asia. When I visited, there were these shops filled with sweet gelatin and coconut milk used for making a kind of desert. The place wasnÂt glassed in like how we have shops here so the sweets were out in the open. There were these flies hovering all over them, at first I was kinda disgusted and couldnÂt understand why they werenÂt covering them. But when I got closer, I realize they were actually bees. Swarm of bees all over the sweets and hovering everywhere. I did eat in there and there were bees that would just fall out of nowhere with there guts splattered, I think there was a queen hovering somewhere. Well this story didnÂt have anything to do with the post, but I just had to share it.

Follow up....
I did a spring harvest last week and found lots of green cells....thus a renewed bit of research.
I've more or less confirmed that the green is from an unknown food syrup possibley from a local amusement park. The spectrum of the honey and FD&C Blue #1 have a remarkably similar absorbance band at 630 nm. My best guess is cotton candy. I'll do a little more testing to be sure about the dye.

I have had a handful of suggestions and anecdotal situations
-honey from the above mentioned Calliandra calothyrsus
-or Saw Palmetto
-or Purple loosestrife
-collected aphid excretion
-raided mint filling in dumped chocolates
-raided soda syrup (Coke)...that'll make the bees buzz!
-obsrevations of green honey from unknonw sources in the Carribbean

Lovely photo, Aegis.
Interesting post.

Did you ever find out how this happened?

You might want to try posting this at beesource dot com

Stumbled upon this thread while searching for "green" honey -- meaning "earth friendly". Very interesting! Wish the picture still worked. Don't know if you ever found the answer, but I found this link from a NY Times article from *1911*!!

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=FA0715FB395517738DDDAB0A94DA415B818DF1D3

1911! Those were the days when people weren't so frighted by bees!

George
Tahlequah, OK