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Music: “Looking for America,” copyright Cave Buckner 2024
Where would storytelling be without country stores, bad farm weather and imaginations—the tail that wags the proverbial dog, so to speak? Not far from where I live now, and where I grew up as a child, is a country store that hasn’t changed much from the days when my grandfather used to crowd around the big wood stove on snowy mornings to talk news, politics, horses, mules and hunting dogs.
You can still sit next to the stove on cold mornings and hear stories from the locals bordering on the mundane to the suspicious.
And if you listen closely, being in the Heart of Little Dixie, on the Gray Ghost Trail, you’re liable to hear a story about a Civil War dust-up and a jar of honey.
Hey—You’re listening to The Southern Minute and I’m your host, Cave Buckner.
This story involves that golden, sweet-flowing sticky, sugar goodness made from the labor of thousands of little forest and backyard residents, known as honeybees. Except this story comes with a dark twist—perfect—if you’re writing a historical fiction thriller, set in the Prohibition 20s in South Georgia.
I do want to emphasize, that my novel, while based on historical facts for the premise, is still a work of fiction. And who doesn’t want to believe “the maybe?” It’s what makes this strange life fun. Not only does it satisfy curious minds, if you can conjure a “What if” bigger than fake news, you can hold an audience enraptured with entertainment value and belief confirmation, a confirmation so strong, you just know it to be true, because I told you it was true—in a round-a-bout, sort of way, with a wink and a nod.
So, gather around the stove and I’ll tell you how the Yankees in 1864, on their way to pillage Atlanta, got waylaid by some special toxic honey, which made the soldiers hallucinate, as if on an LSD trip, made of course by Confederate bees. I’m just tellin’ you the way the story was told to me. What’s that? How do I know a bee is a Confederate? Well, I personally don’t, since that war was over way before my time, but those were Confederate bees simply by having the misfortune, in this case, in 1864, of living below the Mason Dixon line. Those bees were just trying to do what they’ve always done, since 1622, when they were brought over from Europe to the Virginia colonies—that is, make honey.
Bumblebee approaching a rhododendron flower to collect nectar. PHOTO: Vecteezy
Our story starts in the Black Sea region of eastern Turkey and Nepal, where in remote mountains, bees pollinate rhododendrons, some of whose flower nectar contains a natural neurotoxin called “grayanotoxin.”
According to Suleyman Turedi, a doctor at Karadeniz Technical University School of Medicine in Trabzon, Turkey, he says out of 700 species of rhododendron, only two or three species have grayanotoxin, in their nectar.
This toxin provides a defense against insects and vertebrate herbivores, who might try to feed on these rhododendron plants. Honey made from the nectar of these plants can also be poisonous to human beings, which is how it might have been used in warfare
According to Wikipedia, in 65 BC, during the third Mithridatic War, King Mithridates, who succeeded in uniting much of the Hellenic world and Asia Minor against Roman expansion, staged a strategic withdrawal from Roman soldiers under General Pompey.
According to the story, Mithridates had the withdrawing soldiers place combs of mad honey on their path. The Roman soldiers who ate the honey succumbed to mad honey intoxication and were slain.
My guess is that he probably gave the honeycombs to pretty mountain maidens, the forerunner to our hillbilly Holla back girls, who enticed the soldiers to eat their fill. Dr. Turedi says a teaspoon is enough to give light headedness, a euphoria of sorts, and potent hallucinations—any more would have more serious flu-like symptoms, advanced hallucinations, seizures and death in rare occasions. The poisoning effect supposedly wears off after 24 hours.
Back to the Civil War tale of mad honey intoxication, we know that occasionally, a cold snap in the Appalachian Mountains, which includes north Georgia, will kill off other flowers while leaving Rhododendrons, and possibly Mountain Laurels, and some azaleas unaffected, resulting in honeybee mad honey production. Is that a true statement?
North Georgia beekeepers say grayanotoxane is found in the nectar, flowers, leaves, fruit, twigs, and stems, but to wind up in honey, other flowers need to have succumbed to frost, or drought and the bees would either tolerate the toxin, or they wouldn’t.
The beekeepers claim honey made from these rhododendrons is bitter tasting, compared to honey made from the nectar of other flowering plants, and to a degree, that repels many would-be pollinators. Only evolution has allowed certain bees to tolerate the nectar, where the toxicity probably depends on nectar flow from the time of the season to weather considerations at the time of pollination.
To put this in human terms, if on a hot summer’s day the ice cream truck came down your street, playin’ a happy song and you had your heart set on a Bomb Pop, that big ice-cold 3-color, cherry, lime and blue raspberry-flavored popsicle—the ultimate respite from a boring, hot summer afternoon, but the ice cream man said all he had was frozen liver and onions on a stick, would you take that frozen treat or surrender to the fires of Hades right then and there on that neighborhood cul-de-sac? Why, even those fat red-eyed treetop cicadas, that Greek chorus from the molten Netherworld would roar with disappointment.
What self-respecting kid would want a frozen liver and onions popsicle? There’s always one child on the street with esoteric taste in childhood pursuits, and they grow up to be billionaire entrepreneurs, while the rest of us look around at the world we once knew and wonder what happened.
Long live summer Bomb Pops on ice-cream trucks everywhere.
So, here’s the take . . . We know the toxin exists. Though rare, we know all about the human being symptoms of mad honey poisoning. It is for sale on the internet today for about $150-250 per jar. Caution. Beware.
But any mention of using “mad honey” in the literature reads like folk tales.
I haven’t heard the Civil War stories involving mad honey, but those on the internet, more gullible than me, say they exist. And while I can’t find them, I have little reason to doubt it makes a good story.
Which is why I included it in my historical fiction thriller, coming in a couple weeks. I’m launching it as a serial on Substack. You can read a section of the novel every week—consider it like a Netflix series, with cliff hangers and bobble bangers, by subscribing to Cave Buckner Marinates, for free, or I will have a pay digital copy available, should you want to binge. My beta-readers tell me it is a page turner. I prefer barn burner, but to each their own.
You’ve been listening to The Southern Minute. I’m your host Cave Buckner. Stay cool if possible; but get out and enjoy all the fun things this summer season has to offer. Happy reading and safe travels.