Oh, honey! A golden, viscous substance found flowing through summer farmer’s markets. This natural sweetener has been used throughout recorded history.
You’ve made it here, so suffice it to say you already enjoy a little of the sweet stuff from time to time. Most are familiar with “normal” honey, but Natharvest stingless bee honey is anything but average.
BUSY BEES
Let’s talk about the differences between typical honey you’d pick at the grocery store and stingless bee honey.
“Normal” honey comes from Western or European honeybees, known as apis mellifera. This luscious condiment is found on all but one continent - sorry, Antarctica.
On the other hand, stingless bee honey comes from meliponini bee tribes. Melipona and trigona bee species of meliponini bee tribes are indigenous to tropical countries. These insects carry a lot of weight on their shoulders - they are responsible for being the primary flower pollinators.
SWEET AND SOUR STINGLESS BEE HONEY
Upon first tasting stingless bee honey, you may be surprised at the uniquely sweet and sour taste. Unlike its Western counterpart, stingless bee honey has an acidic flavor.
Researchers found that the unique sour taste in stingless bee honey is due to a high content of polyphenol compounds, especially the phenolic acid group.
Compared to honeybee honey, these scientists discovered stingless bee honey to have a bounty of compounds such as coumaric acid, gallic acid, cinnamic acid, caffeic acid and ferulic acid.
It sounds pretty sour!
WHY SO ACIDIC?
As it would turn out, honeybees and stingless bees prefer different flowers. Similarly, to how humans have a variety of palettes when it comes to food preferences, bees share similar behavior.
Like a finicky toddler, honeybees prefer nectar from a particular flower surrounding their hives. This behavior means the honeybee is monofloral.
The stingless bee’s palette is much more refined - like a chef with a taste for fine cuisine. They enjoy nectar from a variety of flowers, meaning they are polyfloral.
Naturally, the difference in the bees’ diets explains the diversity of the honey they produce. Each species has a taste for a different type of nectar, which in turn adds other chemical compounds to their diets.
SO, WHERE DOES OUR SWEET AND SOUR STINGLESS BEE HONEY COME FROM?
Natharvest stingless bee honey is hand-harvested from the mountainous Borneo Island in Malaysia. Also known as sugarbag honey in Australia, stingless bee honey is an excellent alternative to manuka honey or royal honey!