North Carolina beekeepers see purple and blue honey, but it's rare

What’s old is new again.

Timberlake-based Zombees Honey of NC co-owner Whitney Barnes first saw purple honey in 2017.

“North Carolina is so funny in the way that stuff that people think is fascinating and new is basically [a] really old, best-kept secret,” Barnes said. “‘What do you mean you didn’t know?’

“That’s how we know that you’re not really from here because you didn’t know. To me, purple honey is the epitome of North Carolina.”

However, Barnes insists that she is not an expert about purple honey.

Aberdeen-based Dees Bees Apiary owner Donald Dees explained what it’s like to find the sweet stuff in his beehives.

“It’s like finding a little gold nugget or a little piece of jewelry out on the beach,” Dees said. “It’s something special that you find in your beehive that you know the bees put there, and whatever circumstances or conditions environmentally that created the environment for the bees to make this honey has occurred in your area and they’ve brought it into your beehive.”

Beekeepers don’t know what causes the honey to turn purple or blue. The late John Ambrose, who was a former North Carolina State University beekeeping professor and former president of the NC State Beekeepers Association, conducted a series of tests in the 1970s to try to find the answer.

Still, there is not a definitive answer on the cause of the purple or blue honey.

“I think one of the reasons it’s a mystery is because the way that bees’ digestive juices change the character of the pigment and/or the substrate that’s brought in,” Dees said.

Dees offered his best guess as the cause of the purple honey. He pointed out that bees don’t have many blooming plants to feed on from mid-June to mid-September. However, he said during that period, honeybees will collect from blueberries, huckleberries and blackberries on the vine.

“My thought is that the bees go to that fruit, chew it up, get the juice, it goes into their honey stomach, which bees have a separate stomach than their digestive stomach,” Dees said. “They have a honey stomach for transporting nectar, and it’s got enzymes in it.

"When the bees collect that fruit juice, if you will, and it gets modified by the enzymes in the bees’ stomach. And, it comes back and goes into the beehive, and at which point it gets concentrated down just like honey by being passed from bee to bee to bee, which enriches that fruit-like flavor. That’s why it (the blue or purple honey) doesn’t really taste like blueberries or blackberries or huckleberries, but it does have a fruity taste.”

The Sandhills’ hot and dry summer contributed to nectar plants drying up sooner than usual, Dees said.

Barnes said her apiary determines the nectar source based on the “preponderance of evidence” at her site. She said her main nectar source is Tulip poplar. Also, Barnes said trees are the major sources of honey for bees, not flowers and plants on the ground.

In June 2017 and June 2018, Barnes said she had purple honey in her beehives in Granville and Person counties.

“A big misnomer that I really hope we can get out to the public is that it’s not kudzu,” Barnes said. “And, the reason I know that it’s not kudzu is because when it shows up in the hives is prior to when kudzu blooms.”

Dees mentioned two other theories he’s heard, but explained why he doesn’t think they make sense:

The first was granite outcroppings, but Dees said they aren’t found in the Sandhills.

He also discounted aluminum in the soil as the cause for purple honey, saying his apiary would produce it every year if that were the case.

Barnes said she wanted to see a DNA-pollen database developed to conduct chemical analysis on the nectar sources.

“We can’t figure out what purple honey is,” Barnes said.

Dees and Barnes agreed that purple honey comes sporadically and that the color is natural.

Barnes mentioned how honey comes in different shades from clear to almost pitch black.

“It has a definitely distinctive gravy taste that is not like any other … it’s definitely different from the other types of honey,” Barnes said of the purple honey.

Dees said he gets questions about whether the purple honey tastes like regular honey.

“It does in a way,” Dees said. “It’s sweet. It’s produced by the bees, but it has a fruity undertone to it.

“It kind of goes with the unusual character of the honey being purple. It’s a fruity flavor that really no one can identify.”

Barnes said she is an advocate to try to get the mystery solved about the cause of purple honey.

“North Carolina isn’t the only place in the world that has bizarre honey,” Barnes said. “There’s a place in the Middle East with red honey.”

“I’m trying to find and connect people with more people that have it, so that when it happens, I can work to connect people,” Barnes said.

Barnes said she keeps a small amount of the purple honey for herself.

“I feel like if I don’t ever at least keep a little bit, then I’m still going to always have people that insist that it’s not real,” Barnes said.

“I’ve got it on hold,” Dees said of the purple honey orders. “I’ve got a few orders left to fill.”

When it’s in stock, Dees packages the purple honey in 1.9-ounce and 3-ounce jars. He said he’s sent orders of the special honey to Italy and several states, including California, Texas and Nebraska.

“I couldn’t keep up with the orders there for about three or four days,” Dees said. “I mean, I had to shut the website off, so I could get caught up with the orders to make sure I didn’t sell more than I had.”

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