[Forest]

First year beek here.

I added another honey super today and pulled a few honey frames from the one below to look at.

So far, I've only seen very light or yellowish honey this year. Today, there were a few cells that were literally pink.

Is there any plant that produces pink nectar? Or are they drinking something they shouldn't? I remember reading a story about bees getting into the vats at a Maraschino Cherry producer and making red honey...

I've also noticed some darker than usual nectar, but nothing that seems too out of the ordinary in the "honey spectrum"...

 

[Harley Craig]

Hummingbird feeder probably a homemade mix or severely diluted if it isn't bright red

 

[mrobinson]

Yes, they very well might be. The thing to remember is that, if bees encounter a sugar-source or a food source, they w store it. Even if it's not honey. If your bees find a hummingbird feeder, they will pick up the (red colored) sugar water from it, and they will store that.

This is why I don't feed my hives. You read plenty of stories of people who feed quarts of sugar-water a day to their hives, and they witness phenomenal "growth" of the amount of stored "honey," and they are very pleased to harvest it ... and, it "sugars up" in the jar. Why? Well, because it is sugar water. Bees operate on very ancient instincts, and there is no such thing as "a jar of sugar water" in Nature. The rich, complex taste that I find in the honey that I get is ... indescribable. I don't harvest gallons of it, but it's real.

 

[Tenbears]

This is why I don't feed my hives. You read plenty of stories of people who feed quarts of sugar-water a day to their hives, and they witness phenomenal "growth" of the amount of stored "honey," and they are very pleased to harvest it ... and, it "sugars up" in the jar. Why? Well, because it is sugar water. Bees operate on very ancient instincts, and there is no such thing as "a jar of sugar water" in Nature. The rich, complex taste that I find in the honey that I get is ... indescribable. I don't harvest gallons of it, but it's real.

Not understanding the proper times and reasons to feed syrup to your bees does not mean feeding is bad. proper feeding can improve your hive strength, build up, and drawn comb amount. doing so when the supers on can and will result in sugar honey. any supers on when feeding syrup should be extracted for comb use, and the product fed back when the supers are off. the comb, However, Can be used during a flow to increase production with no ill effects.

The source of your pink honey is probably a hummingbird feeder.
But I have an interesting antidote.
I had a friend who had red honey. And I mean RED. tons of it, Far more than one would see from hummingbird feeders. turned out the closed down coffee plant down the road had been bought by a company that packages ****tail cherries, them Marciano cherries you see. and there was some sugary red byproduct they stored outside uncovered. for him life was no longer a bowl of cherries!:lpf:

 

[Phoebee]

Mariciano Honey ... sounds like an interesting specialty market.

My mentor's bee-yard is at a local farm with a large cherry tree nearby. The farm owner tells me his daughter recently tried picking cherries from that tree and the bees got in her hair so badly she had to quit. Why the bees like cherry fruit so much was a mystery to me. They are an unusually bad-tempered bunch (I suspect skunks are at the root of it), so I suspected it was just the proximity of the hives to the tree. But maybe they've developed a taste for cherry fruit like yellow jackets do?

He just did a harvest ... I'll have to ask him if it came out pink.

 

[Michael Bush]

Bees usually don't show any interest in fruit until there is a dearth of nectar and the yellow jackets or birds have put holes in the fruit.

 

[waynesgarden]

This is why I don't feed my hives. You read plenty of stories of people who feed quarts of sugar-water a day to their hives, and they witness phenomenal "growth" of the amount of stored "honey," and they are very pleased to harvest it ... and, it "sugars up" in the jar.

You keep repeating this as if beekeepers, as a whole, are deliberately filling their honey supers with syrup. I know plenty of people that feed when necessary and the honey in their supers is honey as pure and delicious and real as your "indescribable" honey.

And what do you mean by "sugars up" in the jar? Are you referring to honey that crystalizes? I've had years where I did not have to feed a drop all year and in the fall, harvested gallons of goldenrod and aster honey, all of which crystalized seemingly overnight. If crystallization is your measure of purity, you are mistaken.

Wayne

 

[Eikel]

I did hear/read about bees finding some of the discarded coating for M&Ms and storing an interesting array of colored honey.

 

[Forest]

Hummingbird feeder probably a homemade mix or severely diluted if it isn't bright red

Of course- that's got to be it! Thanks for solving my pink puzzle, all!

 

[Forest]

I did hear/read about bees finding some of the discarded coating for M&Ms and storing an interesting array of colored honey.

Hehe- :lpf: