Unexpected Colorists

Carnival-colored Honey (Photograph by Vincent Kessler, Reuters)

In October of 2012, Beekeepers in Ribeauville (a town in the Alsace region of France) were shocked to find that bees were producing vivid green and blue honey.  The hard-working insects were not mutants or abstract expressionists.  They had apparently found a source of colorful sugars which they pragmatically incorporated into their preparations for winter.

It works surprisingly well as a vivid abstract work made with mixed media.

Shocked by the unnatural shades of the sweet honey, the town’s apiarists combed the local countryside until they found the apparent source—M&M candy fragments.   A local biogas plant (a sort of industrial recycling plant) was processing candy fragments from a nearby Mars Candy plant.  The adaptable bees discovered barrels filled with the sugary waste and began converting it to honey and stocking up their honeycomb.  French law however is stern concerning what constitutes saleable honey (honey must be transparent to brown & produced from plant products) so the wacky carnival honey will never see market.  Additionally workers at the biogas plant have enclosed all the candy dust so that the industrious insects don’t take over their jobs.

Artist’s Impression

 

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