Almost every time I teach a beginning beekeeping course, a student or two comes forward to whisper: “If I move my bees to a patch of cannabis, will I get weedy honey?” I tell them that cannabis buds don’t secrete nectar. Then their balloons of enthusiasm deflate. “But the weed store. . . it sells weed-infused honey.”

There’s a big difference between nectar that carries psychedelics and psychedelics carried by honey. I direct my beginning beekeeping students to one of the many webpages that tells how to dry, crush, and infuse – such as here, here, and here. By the way, I was really impressed with the beautiful white honey being infused in the video in the last link.

In the ancient myths, honey was glorified as a super-food, taken by wise guys, such as the Greeks who visited mountainside oracles two-thousand years ago and then spun outrageous tales of odysseys. They believed that the nectar of the gods held power. Where did the super-food idea come from? Some say it was because, until the 1700s, people thought that honey was sent by God in a mist that descended on flowers from above. A pioneering bee book, The Feminine Monarchie (the first English-language book to note that the biggest bee in the colony is a queen, not a king), also endorsed the specious nectar-from-thin-air notion. Despite his enlightenment, the author, Reverend Charles Butler, declared in 1609:

“The greatest plenty of purest nectar cometh from above; which Almighty God doth miraculously distil out of the air . . . which thence doth descend into the earth in a dew or small drizzling rain.”

So, for some of our ancestors, honey was linked to God’s scattering of nectar onto flowers. However, I think that honey’s magic is mostly rooted in its innate sweetness and its potential intoxicating power. When early humans discovered honey mixed with rainwater on abandoned, exposed combs, they had an extra treat. In the right situation, early people would have felt the unprecedented effects of intoxication by way of fermented honey. Honey, likely the first source to alter mental states, was magical. Dr Eva Crane, in her tome, The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting, pages 594-595, speculated:

“A further apparently miraculous property of honey was that, mixed with water and left for a few days, it was transformed into a liquid which endowed the consumer with an apparently magical euphoria . . .”

But, let’s return to the theme of nectar sources (sorry, not available from cannabis) that yield ‘hallucinogenic’ honey. Most notable is the wild honey of Nepal, produced by native bees which have been visiting native flowers.

Also called “mad honey”, this special mountain honey is produced by bees feasting on some species of rhododendron found in Nepal, Tibet, Turkey, and a few other places where rhododendron is abundant. The honey contains grayanotoxins (neurotoxins) that can cause hallucinations, vomiting, loss of consciousness, impotence, and seizures. Not my idea of fun, but to each their own.

Like anything in excess, it will kill you. It’s not possible to know what dosage of mad honey can cause these effects because the honey varies madly from place to place. Spring honey, from rhododendron nectar, is poisonous and may be hallucinogenic. Other honey, produced by the same bees at the same location but later in the year, may be entirely lacking grayanotoxic effects.

I have just finished reading This is Your Mind on Plants, by Michael Pollan. It’s an exploration of society’s relationship with mind-altering flora. Broadly, the book is divided into poppies, coffee beans, and cacti, which respectively deliver pain-killing sedatives, energy boosts, and hallucinations. Although rhododendron honey is not mentioned, I found the book to be an enchanting overview of illicit drugs and medicine plants as well as a provocative discourse on what things are considered illegal in light of the illogic of cultural norms.

I’ve never used illegal drugs. I was afraid of “the man” coming to lock me up, even though I knew that a lot of what is declared illegal is the result of vested interests, corporate overlords, and self-righteous Karens. Nevertheless, my mild consumption of alcohol, past adventures with a few strong cigars, current use of tea and coffee, rare post-surgery narcotics, and deep inner-directed meditation (Vipassana flavour, often) have acquainted me with things that can mildly alter conscious awareness.

Mr. Pollan is a well-informed, engaging, curious sort of person. I am happy to hear his comments on a wide range of subjects. Although I rarely listen to Joe Rogan (Who among us has time to eaves-drop on three-hour-long conversations?), I did listen to a Rogan Podcast when I knew that Pollan would appear. They talked about his book and about psychedelics in general.

Near the end, Rogan and Pollan briefly drifted over to the mysterious hallucinogenic Himalayan honey. Neither had a clue of what they were talking about, though Michael Pollan was grounded to reality better than Joe Rogan. They (especially Rogan) pondered the style of comb that bees foraging on Himalayan honey would design. Rogan knew the Himalayan comb was odd, compared to the comb built by American honey bees. Maybe these were the sort of combs that hallucinating bees generate. Strange and wonderful. On mad honey, could bees with a receptive creative mind (even if the brain weighs just 2 milligrams) build something sort of, well . . . mind blowing?

Pollan didn’t know enough about Himalayan bees to correct Rogan’s idea that the huge flat, unusual comb of Apis dorsata was caused by the evolutionary twists and turns of a species quite different from our western honey bee, Apis mellifera. Pollan is excused – Asian bees are not his strong suit. Rogan was just speculating about something he knew very little about. His podcast is entertainment, with a few bits of verifiable information cementing some of the blocks together. I encourage food experimenters to listen to the podcast here. (You will need a Spotify account.) Listen, but please don’t buy this type of honey – it has become so expensive and over-harvested that the bees that make it and the people that harvest it are in trouble. If the demand for the ultimate Joe Rogan experience accelerates, A. dorsata may become extirpated (locally extinct). That would be both a natural and a cultural disaster.

*Please note that mad honey and cannabis-infused honey is illegal in nanny states. It can present serious health risks for children and adults. Finally, sit down with your medical provider to discuss if natural grayanotoxic rhododendron honey is right for you.