Bees in Brooklyn Hives Mysteriously Turn Red | Hacker News Reader

Bees in Brooklyn Hives Mysteriously Turn Red

nytimes.com

69 pointsphreeza23 comments

It's not "mysteriously", right? They ate Red dye #40 and they are now dyed red.

(I am a little outraged, though. First, it's annoying that bees are eating artificial food designed to save a few cents per liter of soda. But then you realize, if you're upset that bees are gorging themselves on HFCS, isn't it even more outrageous that people do it? I guess we have a conscious choice, and all, but it is amazing on how little interest the average person has in natural food.

I guess as long as the investors in the food companies get their 12% a year, it's all good...)

I think they are upset because of the honey, not because of the bees.

Honey is normally concentrated flower nectar after all, but these bees are making concentrated corn syrup, which I have much easier ways of getting.

upset because of the honey, not because of the bees

TFA: "He and Ms. Mayo also fear that the bees' feasting on the stuff could have unforeseeable health effects on the hives."

Honey is made from nectar, not of nectar. It's pretty likely that what these bees are producing is not that unlike regular honey. It just happens to be artificially coloured and likely has a different makeup of sugars.

What I don't get is why these people are so appalled that bees would do this. Bees don't know shit about nutrition, they just dig sweet stuff and stuff with bright colours. "Mother nature" doesn't "know best", it just does what it has evolved to do. These bees evolved to use what limited computation power they have to find bright stuff that's sweet. Most of the time this means flowers, but apparently not always.

If anything, I'd be excited. This is interesting and new stuff, not horrifying!

Well yeah, it's made from nectar, but there is usually a small amount of pollen, some amino acids, plant sterols and fats and so on.

That's like saying that banana-flavouring is LIKE bananas because it contains the same ester.

But you're right about the OTT reaction... The panicked, hand-wringing, "How COULD they?!" exclamations just show that someone doesn't really have a good grasp of the realities of being a non-human sapient.

Well, like normal honey, this substance is still being regurgitated by the bees. I'm not terribly familiar with the mechanisms involved but I was under the impression the conversion from nectar to honey was largely done by the bees digesting the nectar before depositing it.

Did they execute the queen and divide the honey amongst themselves?

The unanswered question here, for me, is: why is there so much sugar and dye in the runoff from the cherry factory that the bees are interested in it? And why is runoff from anything being released untreated into the surface system?

(I'm glad they made explicit mention of Ms. Mayo's name, though. It was bugging me the whole time and gave the first half of the article almost an Onion-esque feel.)

The person who said it might be from run-off is a bee-keeper who has never visited the factory.

I rather suspect that the bees have found their way into the factory through a small hole, as insects are wont to do, and are directly consuming the syrup.

Sure the bees don't make good tasting honey anymore, but now they glow red at night! How is that not a win?

Oh come on, Direct quote from the article: "But Mr. Selig said there was something extraordinary, too, about those corn-syrup-happy bees that came flying back this summer.

'When the sun is a bit down, they glow red in the evenings,' he said. 'They were slightly fluorescent. And it was beautiful.'"

Hehe, I like how all the way at the bottom they mention the fact the bee's glow in the dark now. If that's not a significant mark against artificial foodstuffs I don't know what is :)

Against? That's awesome.

I didn't interpret that to mean they actually glow in the dark, as in produce their own light, but rather they appear more red "when the sun is a bit down".

While I understand your sentiment, your reasoning isn't the best. There are quite a few things that glow in nature:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glowworm http://www.springbrook.info/glow_worms/about_worms.htm http://rainforest-australia.com/Luminous_fungi.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefly

Considering cherry trees require bees to pollinate, you'd hope the damn cherry factory would be very interested & concerned about this.

They don't grow cherries. The factory buys cherries and makes Maraschino cherries (pickled, dyed bright red, and packed in sugar syrup).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maraschino_cherry

For what it's worth, there are still a couple of brands that make something close to actual maraschino cherries, i.e. without the disgusting amounts of red 40, artificial preservatives, and corn syrup. The ones made by Luxardo are reasonably good:

http://www.amazon.com/Luxardo-Gourmet-Maraschino-Cherries-36...

There are probably even better ones out there, though I haven't been able to find any yet.

Make your own the old fashioned way - just buy a bag of whole frozen sweet cherries, put them in a mason jar, and cover with Maraschino (Luxardo). After three days you'll have a mason jar full of delicious Maraschino cherries.

I know they don't, but with the declining bee population and now this- whether or not you produce the core ingredient to your product, I'd hope you should show some interest in that ingredient continuing to exist.

I doubt the cherries they buy are grown in Brooklyn...

There was no indication that this is harmful to the bees - just to the honey.

did they mutate to include arsenic in their DNA

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