In regards to the Drop of Honey, you colorshifted it to white in porphyry nodes. Why were people not upset about that in comparison to Reverberate? Seems a clear violation of the spirit of the reserve list.

The Reserved List says you can’t print that exact card. That card in another color is completely fair game.

Since making color shifted cards of reserved list cards is ok, (porphyry nodes, drop of honey) when can we expect a black “Ancestral Recall”? Reserved list can’t be reprinted, so what’s stopping wotc from making other off-color reserved cards? What about a 0 cost artifact that has the same text as, say, Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale?

Even if we could print all the Reserved List cards, there are ones we might still not want to make. Overly broken cards don’t make a better game.

Is drop of honey still in green?

Drop of Honey wasn’t in green color pie when I joined Wizards back in 1995. So, no. : )

Early Magic had cards such as Drop of Honey and High Tide that didn't pay much attention to the color pie. What was the first set that used a fully formed color pie?

Early Magic was more more focused on card by card design rather than a holistic overview. This wasn’t just true with flavor but other areas as well. For instance, cards that worked the same would have different templates. I think around the time of Mirage (when what I call the second wave of R&D started - myself, Bill Rose, Mike Elliott, William Jockush, Henry Stern) we started taking a more holistic approach.