HoneyHQ

Jataí honey

Sharply acidic and fruity with a fermented tang — closer to a sharp fruit syrup than to what most people expect honey to taste like.

MultifloralModerateFruityCitrusFloral

Mel de jataí

Honey from the jataí, Brazil's most widely kept stingless bee, a tiny golden species that nests readily in walls, meter boxes and hollow posts across the country. Its honey is thin, acidic and produced in very small quantities — a strong colony yields perhaps a litre a year — and it has been used as a traditional eye and throat remedy for centuries.

Flavour and aroma

Aroma
citrus, fermented fruit, light florals
Flavour
sour fruit, citrus, light florals, faint resin
Finish
Long, sharp and acidic.
Intensity
Moderate
Sweetness
Moderately sweet
Bitterness
None
Acidity
Bright

Colour, texture and crystallisation

Colour
Extra light amber (34-50 mm Pfund)Light amber (50-85 mm Pfund)Amber (85-114 mm Pfund)

Pale to golden amber, varying with the local flora.

Texture
Runny

Distinctly thin and pourable because of its high moisture content — a species characteristic and not a sign of immaturity.

Crystallisation

Very slow — often still liquid after a year or more

Rarely crystallises. Stingless bee honey has a different sugar profile from honey bee honey, with substantially more trehalulose and less glucose.

Typical composition

Moisture
22–30% (typically 26%)
Fructose
28–38% (typically 33%)
Glucose
20–30% (typically 25%)
pH
3–4.2 (typically 3.5)
Electrical conductivity
0.2–1 mS/cm (typically 0.5 mS/cm)

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

Where it comes from

Floral source
Whatever is within a few hundred metres. Jataí forage over short distances, so the honey reflects a very local flora — garden, hedgerow and urban planting as readily as forest.
Origins
Brazil principally, and across Central and South America from Mexico to Argentina.
Origin pages

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

Harvest
January to December (southern hemisphere)

Harvested year-round in small quantities, with yields following local flowering.

The bees
Tetragonisca angustula is among the most adaptable stingless bees, nesting in walls, meter boxes and fence posts in cities. It posts distinctive hovering guard bees at the nest entrance — a soldier caste that is physically larger than the foragers, which is rare among bees.
Usual processing
Raw, Coarsely strained, Pressed

Yields are tiny — a strong colony may produce a litre a year against forty or more from a honey bee colony — which is why the honey commands very high prices. Harvesting is by draining or suctioning the resin pots.

What to do with it

Its acidity makes it useful where an ordinary honey would be too sweet. Treating it as a substitute for ordinary honey usually disappoints.

At the tableDressingsIn cocktailsDesserts

Pairings

  • Sparkling water

    The acidity is the point.

  • Fresh tropical fruit

    Sour on sweet.

  • Cocktails

    Sweetness and acid together.

Pairing pages this honey appears on

Selected by this honey’s own recorded intensity, flavour families and uses rather than by anything written above — each page prints the rule that put it there.

Where this honey sits in the catalogue

History and traditional use

Meliponiculture — stingless beekeeping — predates European contact throughout the Americas and continues across Brazil in both traditional and modern forms. Jataí is the species most people keep, largely because it will nest almost anywhere.

  • Used across Brazil as a traditional remedy for eye complaints, cataracts, coughs and throat infections.

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

Claims about this honey

Established evidence

Supported by systematic reviews, meta-analyses or clinical/regulatory guidance. The claim would survive a careful reader checking it.

Established evidence

Stingless bee honey has a genuinely different composition from honey bee honey and does not meet the Codex honey standard.

Moisture is typically 22 to 30 per cent against 17 to 20 for honey bee honey, pH is lower, and trehalulose — barely present in Apis honey — can make up a large share of the sugars. The Codex standard was written around honey bee honey and its limits do not fit this product.

What this does not claim: This does not claim stingless bee honey is inferior, adulterated or unsafe. Failing a standard written for a different bee is a mismatch of definitions, not a defect.

  • Standard for Honey (CXS 12-1981) — Codex Alimentarius Commission, FAO/WHO (1981) · Standards document Link

Traditional use

Long and documented use in a named tradition. This records that people have done it, and for how long — not that it works.

Traditional use

Jataí honey is used traditionally in Brazil as an eye remedy.

The practice is long-standing and widespread across Brazil, and is documented ethnographically. It is recorded here as practice and not as evidence of effect. Applying any unsterilised substance to the eye carries a genuine infection risk, and this record should not be read as a recommendation to do so.

  • The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting — Routledge (1999) · Historical text

Sources

  • Standard for Honey (CXS 12-1981) — Codex Alimentarius Commission, FAO/WHO (1981) · Standards document Link
  • The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting — Routledge (1999) · Historical text
  • HoneyHQ editorial synthesis — HEKNO Ltd · HoneyHQ synthesis

How sources are selected and weighted is set out in the sources and evidence policy.

Guides that cover this honey

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