To make it, workers grind up thousands of the tiny bugs. Then they mix the deep red powder with water. Nearly 70,000 bugs go into each pound of cochineal, or carmine, coloring.

deep purple-red color, and that's the source of cochineal, cochineal dye, carmine, whatever you wanna call it. Narrator: For thousands of years, people have been using these bugs to dye everything ...

Indigenous people across Latin America traded it for thousands of ... Cochineals are tiny bugs that live on prickly pear cactuses. The acid in their guts makes a red dye used in textiles ...