French beekeepers in Ribeauville are stuck with their autumn honey harvest; the honey is strangely blue and sort of green,
The beekeepers believe the reason their honey has turned blue is because of a biogas plant close to Ribeauville in Alsace. It is thought the bees have been eating the sugary waste from M&Ms, small chocolates in brightly-coloured shells.
A spokeswoman for the British Beekeepers’ Association, Gill Maclean, said it was possible that the coloured sugar could have contaminated the honey and turned it blue.
The plant operator said it regretted the situation and had put in place a procedure to stop it happening
again.
Philippe Meinrad, a spokesman from Agrivalor, the company operating the biogas plant, was quoted by Reuters as saying.”We discovered the problem at the same time [the beekeepers] did. We quickly put in place a procedure to stop it,”
A company statement published in Le Monde newspaper said that the company which deals with waste from a Mars chocolate factory would clean out the containers, store all incoming waste in airtight containers and process it promptly.
Ribeauville found in northeastern region of France is home to 2,400 beekeepers and 35,000 colonies that produce roughly 1,000 tons of the sweet stuff per year according to the region’s chamber of commerce.
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