My experiences with apricot seeds.

My grandmother used to mix and perserve stuff, mainly veggies, for the 

winter months. (We lived in the rural north.) One of the ingredients

was the apricot seeds. The fermentation process must have removed some

bitterness. I didn't like it that much but still ate some with my

morning porridge everyday.

 

Another piece of memory: I used to collect and crush apricot cores and

gather the seeds to sell to collectors (mostly for traditional Chinese

medicine, I think). They were not cheap (more costly than dried orange

peels) and could be a non-trivial income source for a kid.