Honey has stayed a prized commodity for thousands of years, known for its sweetness and medicinal properties. After all, they don’t call paradises “the land of milk and honey” for no reason.
It’s naturally antibacterial and, ironically, can even help with allergies. Not to mention it tastes amazing with a little goat cheese, fruit, and cured meats.
In the past few years, honey has been paired with the wonders of cannabis for a number of cannabis-infused honey brands. But a French beekeeper has taken it a step further. Going by the pseudonym Nicolas Trainerbees, the beekeeper claims to have trained his bees to actually extract from cannabis plants. Of course, others believe that his proclamations may be those of science fiction.
Nature’s pharmacy at work
As an amateur zoologist and entomologist, he’s spent the last twenty years of his life working with ants, lizards, and tarantulas, but he’s particularly fond of working with honeybees.
After years of training honeybees to collect resin from cannabis plants, Nicolas has created a product he’s christened “cannahoney,” made from flower with all the calming effects of consuming edibles.
Nicolas’ work is spreading on Instagram and Facebook, but so far he says that his production levels are too low to bring his project to market. So no one else has been able to try his “cannahoney,” or been able to replicate his closely-guarded process.
You don’t have to be a cynic to suggest that just might be because it’s not actually possible. But to confirm it, we spoke to Vincent Strode, a researcher at the Center for Invasive Species Research and the University of California, Riverside.
Too good to be(e) true?
Strode doesn’t doubt that honeybees could be trained to collect resin.
“There is certainly nothing odd about training honeybees. Karl von Frisch trained bees using classical conditioning, or positive reinforcement, back in 1914. You could easily train bees to go to many things. They are actually fairly intelligent for insects,” says Strode.
But using that collected resin to make honey? That’s another matter.
“Honey is created by Honeybees collecting nectar from a floral source. Nectar is a substance that a plant produces for the sole purpose of attracting an organism to the flower to aid in pollination,” says Strode.
In short, nectar is what bees use to make honey, and nectar can only be found in plants that rely on pollinators like bees, birds, and butterflies for pollination.
The trouble is that cannabis is not one of those plants. Cannabis is wind pollinated, and therefore does not produce nectar but, instead, relies on the wind to propagate itself.
“In this case, it seems unlikely, to me, that someone has had bees that have produced honey from a Cannabis plant,” says Strode.
Disappointed? Don’t be. You can still enjoy the combination of cannabis and honey. For example, skincare brand Cannuka is making gorgeous (and heralded) products infusing CBD and manuka honey, as well as hemp and sage honey from Inda Creations.
In order to learn more about the benefits of infusing cannabis in your food, take a look at some of our favorite edibles and the variety of options available to new and experienced consumers.
