As a worker at Honey Testing Ltd., you are approached by the angry managers of two honey-making companies, Holly's Healthy Honey and Sam's Sticky Sweets. Both companies have been accused of diluting their honey with cheap sugar syrup to cut costs. They have come to you to find out if their employees really have been adulterating their honey, or if such accusations are unwarranted.

Honey is produced from nectar collected by bees. Each carbon atom in honey, as a result, could come from one of two natural sources: it could be found in the honey's sugars (produced through photosynthesis in nectar-producing plants), or it could be found in the honey's proteins (produced by bees in the form of enzymes to enhance the ripening of nectar).

Before beginning to test the suspicious honey samples from these two companies, you need to know how isotope ratios can be used to distinguish between pure and diluted honey. The ratio of stable carbon isotopes (¹³C and ¹²C) is usually used for this purpose. In a pure sample of honey, would you expect the ¹³C/¹²C ratio of honey sugars and the ¹³C/¹²C ratio of honey proteins to be the same?