French beekeeper, Nicholas Trainer, has reportedly attempted to combined the health benefits of both cannabis and honey by training bees to produce cannabis-infused honey from the plant’s flowers.
Trainer has been an advocate for medical marijuana use from an early age. He started using before he was 10 to help manage his hyperactive condition that had caused him so much trouble in school. Knowing how cannabis could help him and how honey has its own natural health benefits, Trainer figured that the two would be a perfect combination. As an already avid beekeeper, he decided to train his bees to gather resin from cannabis plants before making their honey.
“I have trained bees to do several things, such as collect sugar from fruits instead of using flowers,” Trainer told reports. “The aim arose for me to get the bees to obtain this resin.”
To produce the cannabis-infused honey the bees harvest cannabis resin from the plant’s flowers and then bring it back to the hive, where it’s processed as it would be with normal nectar.
Many have thought of this concept before, however, were afraid that it couldn’t be done, that cannabis flowers could not be used for making honey and that it could potentially be harmful to the bees.
After two years of research and experimentation, Trainer proved that the plant’s flowers have absolutely zero negative impact on the bees. His research found that the bees actually cannot be affected by cannabinoids because they do not have an endocannabinoid system. This biological system found in the mammalian central nervous system and peripheral nervous system is involved in regulating a variety of physiological and cognitive processes including appetite, pain-sensation, mood, memory, and in mediating the pharmacological effects of cannabis.
Trainer believes that his cannabis honey has the same effect on humans as smoking or consuming cannabis does. He describes his innovative honey as tasting quite floral and ranges in colors from light green to white or yellow depending on the strain.
Since this is still a relatively new discovery, there has yet to be tests conducted to see how much of the original cannabis is in the final honey product. However, Trainer believes that cannabis-infused honey contains the same health benefits of both honey and cannabis. The bees can also use the resin from any strain of cannabis, meaning that there could be limitless possibilities for creating different forms of cannabis honey.
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