I am wondering if anyone has had any luck with producing honey from cannabis plants. I don’t mean honey oil but REAL HONEY, like the honeybees make.
Honey is not made from pollen, it is made from nectar.
Does anyone know whether the cannabis plant has any nectar production? I don’t mean resin but real NECTAR. Nectar is usually at the base of the flower while the resin covers everything.
A friend of mine sent me a clip about this… I’ll take a look…but I believe your answer is “not really”.
Bees may eat male pollen…
This link may answer you…
http://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=19764
There’s nothing produced to attract honeybees because it’s wind driven pollenation.
That’s a problem with hive collapse, so many crops require them, but not our grows.
Thank you Dumme. That is a great video. I did not think the cannabis plant produced nectar but this just supports that.
I always have people say “How about some Pot Honey” so this will be their answer.
They will gather the pollen whether it is airborne or not but there is VERY little pollen in honey. Pollen is their protein while honey is their carbohydrates.
Now how about propolis? Propolis is made from tree or plant sap. If they could use THC resin to produce propolis, you may wind up with a nice hash.
I’ll continue to research this and let you know what I find.
Well how about this?
Bees will eat sugar water.
Will bees eat sugar water that has cannabis extracts added to it?.. and in turn make honey that contains cannabis compounds?.
i dont see why not…
A quick search shows that bees do not have an cannabinoid system. (google)
Should not be too hard to make an emulsion following standard beekeeper sugar:water ratios (Beekeepers guild)
1:2 1:1 etc…
Now how to make an emulsion using cannabis extracts, with a standard sugar water formula. would it resemble a sap or liquid. What about viscosity?, color?.. etc.
Remember that THC resin is oil-based and not water-based. It won’t mix with the sugar water.
One other thing. Bees cannot make honey from the sugar syrup mix. They will store it and cap it but it isn’t real honey and is usually much lighter in color.
You can mix a fatty substance and water… Its called an emulsion. Drink milk?.. thats fat + water. They dont mix, but the fatty bits stay suspended in water.
I’m getting conflicting notes about sugar water feed for bees. The rebuttal claims sugar water still makes honey.
“The bees are well able to convert this PLANT sweetened water into HONEY, regardless the pedantic arguments, and the hive utilizes this honey throughout the winter months, to survive and live.”
There are so many holes in that argument, I could not begin to say anything more. But here at the University of Florida Nematology Department you will find very few that would agree that what they produce from syrups is honey.
Commercial beekeepers do indeed use High Fructose Corn Syrup to feed their hives, but not at our recommendation and I never would use that stuff in my hives.
And anyone that would market the “Honey” produced from even Cane Sugar are ripping you off. Real Honey also contains trace amounts of other things that the sugar syrup will not, such as pollen.
That honey you see at the supermarket has had all signs of pollen removed. That is why we encourage people to buy locally-produced honey. Besides supporting your local economy, it can help with allergies among other things.
The question isn’t about “real” honey for me, What I am suggesting is clearly artificial. The intent is to make adulterated “honey”.
Feeding bees an artificial solution containing THC or Cannabis extracts to feed bees is the only way that I can think of to make bees eat a specific thing that does not exist in nature to put out an adulterated product. If you have to feed them a HFC Emulsion to make “honey” i’m fine with that. If it works I want a patent on that…
Cannabis lacks nectar, it does not have “perfect flowers” its dioecious, and pollination is driven by other methods, so it does not need insects or any lures. If that answers the original question.
Like this?
Thats another possibility, but the method is to get bees to eat or gather THC compounds for them to process it into honey or so the OP describes.
I think its more practical to do the infused honey, saves a step for sure.
.and you can constantly control how strong it is.
Absolutely, I calculate THC mg per serving, at least with baked goods.
It would be great if the bees would do as we want and help with this but they do not read these forums and are pretty set in their way of life.
All of the infused honey that I have seen has been man-made, whether it is THC or anything else.
And man-made is not bad but just don’t get your hopes up that the bees will help.
How do you calculate the mg of THC in a teaspoon? I imagine you would have to analyze it in a lab, which would be a little expensive, no? The strength would have to be calculated on past experiences I would imagine.
The simplest way is to divide THC weight by servings.
Super simplified:
100mg of THC added to 100 ml of honey, 10 ml per serving. 10mg per serving. or 1mg/ml.
But it really looks like this…
17.1THCA =15.65%THC For flowers. From lab test. (Elmers Glue, GG4 x The White)
26 Grams of sugar trim/flower.
Yield = 3.926G of THC in the batch
80% recovery actually made it into the fat, (estimated)
3.14 G in for 2 sticks of butter.
1.57 G THC for 1 stick of butter mixed per package directions.
1.57 / 24 cookies, Assumed zero THC loss during bake time.
.065 per cookie.
6.5 Mg per cookie.
There are a couple of guesses in there,but I think its close enough. Labwork costs 80$ per sample. I’ll do it for flowers but I wont do it for edibles.