We thump the watermelon first, but looking for the buttery yellow underside is a better indicator for ripeness.
There’s a prevailing old wives’ tale that finding ‘bee stings’ will insure a sweet melon. Bee stings are the long thin rows of brown spots. It look like something stung the watermelon in a long straight row.
While bees/wasps do look for sweet things, they’re not going to use their stingers to extract the sugar–not that it could penetrate the rind anyway.
That aside, I can anecdotally attest that melons with a row of ‘bee stings’ have in fact been sweeter for us. Is the old wives’ tale true? Who knows? But I’m going to keep picking melons with the telltale brown sting marks.
Have you heard of picking watermelons via the bee sting test? What do you do to see if a melon is ripe?
Is there anyone out there who doesn’t like watermelon? If so, what planet are you from? 🙂
