Our honey turned green. Actually I think it was yellow but mixed with blue water, it turned green. Basically the bees used blue water to make honey which would normally be yellow but blue plus yellow makes green.

Wow. I just read that back and realized how confusing it sounds so let me paint you the whole picture.

We have several ponds on our farm. And by several I mean three. One pond in particular is much loved by bees. This pond has water lilies, water Hawthorne and a “beach entry” made from river rock. Bees find this pond easy to gather water from. They land on the water lilies, the rocks and suck up tons of water during the heat of summer.

In order to keep algae bloom at a minimum I dye the pond water in the spring. I’ve been using aquatic pond dye for years. It is vegetable based and safe for fish and the environment. I use black dye and it creates a lovely mirror reflection of the sky and the fish standout and practically glow.

I purchase pond dye on Amazon. Last spring I was excited to see a larger bottle for similar price and used the handy buy now feature. Who doesn’t love the same product for cheaper?!?!? It was not until I was actually pouring the dye into the pond I realized my purchase was not my usually black dye but something called Caribbean Blue. It was blue. Really blue. Like a neon blue crayon. The blue crayon no one uses.

I went ahead and used the dye because I was already into the process and figured the blue might be fun. It was certainly blue. It wasn’t until we harvested some honey frames later in the season that I realized yellow plus blue equals green.

Interestingly the honey tasted great and the wax I rendered was typical yellow beeswax.

All in all it was a great year for honey and even though it was green I’m counting it as a success.

(Incidentally I contacted the dye company and they said they have never encountered a customer who had this issue and although they could not comment on whether or not it was safe to eat they did send over the material safety data sheet and being vegetable based it is safe for the environment)