The shine on candy corn is bug resin. Brach's calls it confectioner's glaze. The bag reads sugar, corn syrup, then 2% or less of salt, dextrose, confectioner's glaze (shellac), gelatin, honey, artificial flavors, sesame oil, Yellow 5, Yellow 6 and Red 40. Shellac is what a lac insect leaves on tree branches in India and Thailand. It gets scraped off the bark, cleaned, dissolved in alcohol and tumbled over the candy, and it dries into the same hard coat that goes on a hardwood floor. That's the shine, and it's why the pieces don't glue themselves together in the bag. The gelatin is pork or beef collagen, there for the chew. The honey Brach's puts on the front of the bag is under 2%, behind the salt. Bags on shelves this fall list Red 40. Last year's listed Red 3, which FDA pulled from food in January 2025 with a 2027 deadline. Brach's says it makes about 7 billion kernels a year.