Jandaíra honey

Flavour and aroma

Aroma

citrus, fermented fruit, resin, flowers

Flavour

sharp citrus, tamarind, floral, faint resin

Finish

Long, sharp and cleansing.

Intensity

Pronounced

Sweetness

Moderately sweet

Bitterness

Trace

Acidity

Bright

Colour, texture and crystallisation

Colour

Extra light amber (34-50 mm Pfund)toLight amber (50-85 mm Pfund)

Pale to mid gold, and noticeably less viscous than Apis honey.

On setting: Rarely crystallises; its high moisture keeps it fluid.

Texture

Runny

Thin and pourable in a way Apis honey is not, which is a direct consequence of its much higher water content.

Crystallisation

Very slow — often still liquid after a year or more

High moisture and a different sugar profile mean stingless bee honey essentially does not granulate. It ferments instead if it is not kept cold.

Typical composition

Moisture

24–34% (typically 28%)

Glucose-to-fructose ratio

0.8–1.05 (typically 0.9)

pH

3.1–4 (typically 3.5)

Electrical conductivity

0.2–0.8 mS/cm (typically 0.4 mS/cm)

The moisture figure is the important one and it is well established: stingless bee honey routinely runs at 25 to 30 per cent water against 17 to 18 for Apis honey. That is why it ferments, why it must be refrigerated, and why it cannot meet the Codex standard written for Apis honey.

What these mean: the sugars and the ratio · moisture · conductivity · how each is measured

Where it comes from

Floral source

Caatinga dry-forest flora, worked by a bee with a much shorter foraging range than a honey bee, which means jandaíra honey reflects a very local flora.

Origins

Rio Grande do Norte, Ceará and the wider Brazilian northeast.

Origin pages

• Brazil
• South America
• Caatinga

Resolved from both directions — origins this honey names, and origins that name it.

Harvest

June to September (southern hemisphere)

Harvested after the rains, and in much smaller quantities per colony than an Apis hive gives — a few litres a year rather than tens of kilograms.

The bees

Melipona subnitida has no functional sting and stores honey in clustered wax and resin pots rather than in hexagonal comb. The colony is far smaller than a honey bee's and the yield correspondingly tiny, which is the honest reason for the price.

Usual processing

Raw, Coarsely strained

Harvested by suction or by cutting pots open, and it must be refrigerated or dehumidified immediately. Brazilian producers increasingly use controlled dehumidification to bring moisture down without heat.

What to do with it

Treat it as a sharp syrup rather than as honey. It is excellent in a dressing or over fruit, and it is genuinely wrong on toast.

At the tableDressingsIn cocktailsDrizzlingDesserts

Pairings

• Fresh tropical fruit

  Acid against acid, with the honey's floral aromatics doing the joining.

• Cocktails

  Already fluid and already acidic, so it needs no syrup step and brings its own sourness.

• Ceviche and raw fish

  Its sharpness behaves like a citrus element rather than a sweetener, which is a genuinely modern use.

History and traditional use

Melipona subnitida is threatened in the wild by caatinga clearance and by the loss of the large hollow trees it nests in, which makes managed colonies a conservation measure as much as a production one.

• Meliponiculture in the Brazilian northeast is an indigenous tradition that predates European contact and continues as a smallholder practice.
• Used in regional folk medicine for eye and throat complaints, a use recorded across several stingless-bee-keeping cultures.

Traditional use records that people have done something, and for how long. It is not evidence that it works.

Claims about this honey