Trust Us, You Won’t Want to Eat Honey Made from M&Ms

Beekeepers in Ribeauville, France ;were puzzled about why their bees were producing honey that came out green and blue … until they found a biogas plant processing Mars candy waste some two-and-a-half miles away. “It appears the enterprising bees have been eating the waste from a nearby biogas plant that has been processing the waste produced in the making of M&Ms,” reports The Independent‘s Rob Williams, while Reuters’s Patrick Genthon says the keepers think it’s specifically the “residue from containers of M&M’s candy” that’s making their honey turn funny colors. A similar thing happened stateside in 2010 according to The New York Times‘s Susan Dominus who reported that a woman’s artisanal bees in Red Hook, Brooklyn, gorged themselves on maraschino cherry juice and turned their honey and honeycombs cough-syrup red. ;”We discovered the problem at the same time they did. We quickly put in place a procedure to stop it,” ;said a co-manager of the plant, telling Genthon that the company will thoroughly clean its containers and waste would be stored in a covered hall.

Beekeepers tell Genthon that the blue-green honey still tastes like honey, but they won’t be selling it. We don’t blame them. ;It’s hard to imagine consumers smearing something that looks like paint onto their Greek yogurt. ;