This Rare ‘Mad Honey’ is Only Found in Two Places in the World

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https://edition.cnn.com/travel/mad-honey-deli-bal-turkey-black-sea

In the little wooden hut perched high on metal-wrapped stilts, the drone is high, loud and insistent.

With his beekeeping suit on, but hands uncovered, Hasan Kutluata squeezes the bellows on his pine-filled bee smoker. Pale wreaths swirl in the air, mirroring the mist that drifts over the slopes of the densely forested Kackar mountains outside.

The smoke is to calm the bees, masking the pheromone they release when they sense danger and which warns other bees to attack.

When Kutluata lifts the lid off the round lindenwood hives, the hum rises to a crescendo - but these bees aren't angry, it's just their honey that's mad.

We're here to harvest deli bal - bal means "honey" and deli means "crazy" or "mad" - and Turkey's Black Sea region is one of only two places in the world to produce it, the other being Nepal's Hindu Kush Himalayan mountain range.

"In our untouched forests, the purple rhododendron blooms in spring," Kutluata tells CNN. "The bees collect nectar from those flowers, and that's how we get the mad honey."

The nectar contains a naturally occurring toxin called grayanotoxin. The amount that makes it into the honey varies per season and what other flowers the bees have been feasting on, but a spoonful can pack enough buzz to deliver a gently soporific high - while a jar would land you in a hospital.

For millennia, deli bal has been used as folk medicine, a spoonful taken daily to lower blood pressure or used as a sexual stimulant. Today, this potentially dangerous delicacy sells at a premium price.

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