STINGLESS BEE HONEY

What is honey?

Honey bees live in colonies called hives, and they fly away from their hives to forage for pollen, propolis and nectar. The nectar is what is used to make honey, and is extracted from various flowers using the bee’s tongue and is stored in its crop – the “honey stomach”. Bees actually have not one, but two stomachs – one for eating, and another for honey. When its honey stomach is completely full, bees can almost double its weight.

When honey bees fly back to the hive, they begin to secrete enzymes that help to change the acidity and composition of the nectar to make it suitable to keep a long time. Upon its return, the forager bee will regurgitate what’s in its crop, and pass it onto a house bee. This process is called trophallaxis.

House bees then process the nectar internally, chewing it and adding more enzymes into it, which breaks down the complex sugars into simple sugars. After this, it is placed into the cells of beeswax. Over time, bees will dehumidify the nectar by fanning it with their wings, taking the moisture away from the nectar, creating the syrupy and gooey honey that we know.

Each type of honey differs by the type of flower the honeybees visit to extract nectar. One hundred grams of honey provides about 1,270 kJ (304 kcal) of energy with no significant amounts of essential nutrients. Composed of 17% water and 82% carbohydrates, honey has low content of fat, dietary fiber, and protein.

Stingless and Common bee honey

Honey is a natural product produced and marketed worldwide by stingless bees and Apis bees. Both these types of honey contain unique and distinct compounds of variable nutritional and biological importance. Stingless bee honey is popular for its distinct sweetness, mixed with an acidic taste, and fluid texture; it has higher added value than Apis mellifera honey.

Stingless bee honey is one of the most complex natural foodstuffs. This type of honey quantitatively possesses a higher moisture content, greater acidity, a slightly lower level of total carbohydrates, and higher levels of antioxidant and biological activities than Apis mellifera honey.

The key difference between stingless and stringing bee honey is one kind of sugar (carbohydrates) named trehalulose in the stingless. Trehalulose is more slowly digested and there is not the sudden spike in blood glucose that you get from other sugars. Moreover, the stingless bee honey contains 3x more antioxidants than honey from stinging bees. Antioxidants are agents that save cells from the harmful effects of reactive oxygen species. Overall, the stingless honey has lower level of calories and kill more harmful bacteria than from stinging bees.