Yes, NC beekeepers have purple (and blue) honey — and that’s an incredibly rare brag

A viral Reddit post is teaching thousands of people what North Carolina beekeepers have known for decades: We have purple (and blue) honey. And that’s an incredibly rare brag.

Purple honey, also known as blue honey, is known to come from honeybees in various regions of North Carolina. Local beekeepers and apiculturists have seen it in different parts of the state, but as far as they know, it’s a North Carolina-specific phenomenon.

What gives the honey its blue hue? That’s the age-old question.

“There aren’t many true mysteries — science tends to give us a yes or no answer. But with this one, nobody’s really figured out the cause,” said Paige Burns, the NC Cooperative Extension’s Richmond County Center director and member of the Richmond County Beekeepers Association.

Where to find purple, blue honey in NC

Purple honey seems to be concentrated in the Sandhills, the southwest corner of North Carolina’s Coastal Plain, but not impossible to find outside of the area, said David Tarpy, an apiculturist and professor at NC State University and Extension office.

Beekeepers know that there are other parts of North Carolina, outside of the Sandhills, where bees produce purple honey. You can find more blue-ish hives in the Coastal Plain, Burns said.

Other beekeepers say blue honey is found in the Piedmont and purple honey in the mountains.

David Auman, president of the Richmond County Beekeepers Association, got into the beekeeping business specifically to learn how to make the purple stuff.

“Purple honey — and I call it purple because mine’s purple — is exactly why I got into beekeeping. An older gentleman lived about 10 miles up the road from me, and his bees made purple honey. He taught me how to do it too,” he said.

Auman has two or three hives at a time, though only one hive will produce the purple honey. He normally gets a little bit each year, though every few years, he gets enough to harvest, jar and sell.

His purple honey comes in late July, and when there’s enough to sell, he’ll charge a few dollars more than the golden variety.

“It takes more time to separate, and I learned there’s a demand for it,” he said. “For a pint, non-purple honey is $12, and my purple honey is $15.”

Most beekeepers in the Richmond group don’t get purple honey, though they also keep bees year-round in the Sandhills area of the state. The few that do will jar and sell it locally, Auman said.

To get your hands on some, you should make friends with beekeepers, he said.

What does purple (or blue) honey taste like?

“Kind of fruity,” Auman said. “My daughter doesn’t care for honey, but she likes the purple one.”

Darker honeys typically have stronger flavors, but purple honey is packed with sweetness.

The shade of golden honey, from pale yellow to dark brown, depends on the type of flower that the nectar comes from, Burns said. Clover honey is light in color, while buckwheat honey can look nearly black.

What makes purple honey purple (or blue)?

John Ambrose, a longtime beekeeping professor at NC State and a former president of the NC State Beekeepers Association, conducted an experiment in the 1970s to try to learn the answer.

He found honeybees bringing nectar back to blue-honey hives didn’t have blue in their honey stomachs (which carry nectar back to their hives), but the bees leaving the hives did.

“That tells you something is happening to the nectar after it reaches the hive to change the color,” Ambrose told Our State in 2010.

Experts don’t have one agreed-upon answer, but there are a handful of theories:

• Sourwood: There’s only been one investigation done into the phenomenon, Tarpy said. Former NC State researchers concluded that the hue comes from a combination of several factors, including nectar produced by sourwood trees growing in high aluminum soils under drought conditions.

It hasn’t been verified, and sourwood tends to be more prevalent in the mountains than the sandhills, but sourwood’s mid-summer bloom keeps the theory consistent, Tarpy said.

Hydrangea flowers are blue when planted in acidic soil, which is similar to this hypothesis, Burns said.

“Bees take nectar from flowers that grow in acidic soil, and the aluminum is transformed in the process of making honey. But that situation doesn’t change — our soils are always acidic, and flowers grow in acidic soil. So why don’t we have blue honey more regularly?” she said. “There has to be a trigger factor, but what is it?”

• Titi plants: Blue honey and blue brood have been linked to these plants, pronounced “tie-tie.”

Blue brood is honey bee larvae that have blue or purple streaks that run through their translucent guts, Tarpy said. Many local Sandhills residents swear by the titi plants, which also bloom mid-summer, but there’s no hard evidence.

• Kudzu: These Japanese flowers (abundant in North Carolina) are purple, and some have claimed the color comes from the noxious invasive nectar, Tarpy said. To his knowledge, there’s no link between kudzu and blue honey.

• Fruit juice: It’s been argued, but never confirmed, that bees collecting fruit juice from elderberries and huckleberries makes the honey purple, Tarpy said.

“In the heat of the summer, bees can resort to collecting sugar sources from where they can, but this seems unlikely to me,” he said.

• Fungus: A researcher with the NC Department of Agriculture once claimed to find a certain fungus growing in blue honey, and samples were shipped off for verification, Tarpy said.

It wasn’t confirmed, though this doesn’t mean it was proven negative, he said. Most microbes, including fungi, can’t grow in honey, though blue honey spoils quicker than others.

• Human-discarded sugars: “Every once in a while, bees can make honey that is vibrantly colored of all sorts. Oftentimes this is from the syrups used for Icees or sno cones, and the grape flavor can make it very purple, but usually not the only color available,” Tarpy said.

Still, he thinks NC’s purple honey comes from a natural source, not a human one.

French honeybees have been known to produce lime green, chocolate brown and vibrant blue honey. Local beekeepers found that bees weren’t collecting nectar from nearby flowers, but instead eating the remnants of M&M candy shells processed by a candy plant (a factory, not an M&M-growing tree) under three miles away.

In 2010, Brooklyn bees made honey in a firetruck red. The culprit: maraschino cherries.

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