North Carolina’s Purple Honey Is One Delicious Mystery

The rolling hills and sandy soils of the North Carolina Sandhills make it a prized {golfing} vacation spot. Spanning eight counties within the south-central a part of the state, this distinctive area is finest recognized for being home to Pinehurst Resort. However should you look nearer, you’ll discover probably the most biodiverse ecosystems in North America and, should you’re fortunate, some violet-hued honey.

What Is Purple Honey?

Purple honey is a uncommon honey that has a purple coloration and a mysterious origin. Matt Lawrence, proprietor of Hawfields Honey House in Mebane, says that whereas purple honey doesn’t odor any totally different than regular honey, it does style slightly totally different. He describes it as a “slight purple style.” 

“It nearly makes me marvel, although, if it’s the thoughts enjoying tips, given the purple coloration,” he provides. 

The place Is it Discovered?

The Sandhills area of North Carolina is the one place on the planet the place bees produce purple honey… generally. In keeping with David R. Tarpy, a professor and extension apiculturist within the Division of Utilized Ecology at North Carolina State College, purple honey is “extremely sporadic” throughout the area.

What Causes Purple Honey?

The precise reason for its coloration is unknown, however there are a number of theories. Nonetheless, specialists can agree on one factor about North Carolina’s purple honey: The thriller surrounding it solely appears so as to add to its attract.

Environmental Elements

Tarpy says {that a} earlier investigation into the phenomenon performed at NC State concluded that it was a mixture of a number of various factors: bees feeding on nectar produced by sourwood timber rising in soil with excessive aluminum ranges underneath drought circumstances. Nonetheless, he notes that this has by no means been verified.

Titi Plant

A idea many locals swear by is the Titi plant, scientifically often called Cyrilla racemiflora. In keeping with Tarpy, this shrub has been linked with blue honey and blue brood, a phenomenon the place honey bee larvae have a blue or purple streak that runs by their translucent intestine. 

Kudzu Flowers

As a result of kudzu flowers are purple, many have claimed it to be the results of feeding from this invasive vine, although they’ve by no means been formally linked.

Summer season Fruit

Tarpy says that despite the fact that bees generally resort to gathering sugar from fruits like elderberries and huckleberries within the warmth of the summer season, this speculation has by no means been confirmed.

Human Meals

Generally bees can gather human-discarded sources of sugar, corresponding to soda, from trash cans. “Each infrequently, bees could make honey that’s vibrantly coloured of all kinds,” Tarpy says. “Oftentimes, that is from the syrups used for ICEEs or snow cones, and the grape taste could make it very purple.” These syrups are available in each coloration, which wouldn’t clarify the solely purple hue of the prized honey.  

How Uncommon Is It?

Native beekeepers can expertise purple honey one yr and never the following. Lawrence says he has “extracted hundreds of frames of honey” and has solely seen it as soon as, on a buyer’s property seven years in the past. Aberdeen-based Dees Bees Apiary proprietor Donald Dees has come throughout purple honey a time or two as properly. In a 2022 interview with WRAL, he defined what it’s prefer to see it in a beehive.

“It’s like discovering slightly gold nugget or slightly piece of knickknack out on the seashore,” Dees advised the native newspaper. “It’s one thing particular that you just discover in your beehive that you recognize the bees put there. No matter circumstances or environmental circumstances created the surroundings for the bees to make this honey have occurred in your space, they usually’ve introduced it into your beehive.”