Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Changing colours of honey

Honey is golden coloured the world over, but beekeepers in France's Ribeauville town of Alsace region may not agree.
The honey their bees ooze out came in shades of blue and green. Being shocked by the freakish honey, beekeepers didn't sell it for fear of contamination.
Every time they went to the hives they found only the coloured substance that remotely looked like honey.
Given the alarming decline of bee population the world over, the incident stirred the farming community there, because it started hitting their livelihood.
The coloured honey hit the lives of 2,400 beekeepers in Alsace who tend some 35,000 colonies, producing about 1,000 tonnes of honey per year.
France being the largest honey producer in the European Union, the freakish honey was a worrisome situation.
They grappled with the problem without finding out the reasons, and eventually started inveatigating.
It was later that they noticed a biogas plant some 4km away from their bee colonies. The plant has been processing waste from a candy-manufacture unite, which produced bite-sized candies in bright red, blue, green, yellow and brown colours.
The mystry thus has been solved as it is found that the residue from the candy containers straightaway get to bees when they gorge on them, leading to colour change i  honey. Now the company authorities have stepped in to address the problem.
Look how serious the situation is. The colour change in honey helped the farmers identify the problem.
Most of the vegitables and fruits we eat are heavily contaminated. What could be the fallout?

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