Jataí honey

Flavour and aroma

Aroma

citrus, fermented fruit, light florals

Flavour

sour fruit, citrus, light florals, faint resin

Finish

Long, sharp and acidic.

Flavour character

• Floral and fruity — fruity, citrus, floral

Colour, texture and crystallisation

Colour

1. Water white0–8 mm
2. Extra white8–17 mm
3. White17–34 mm
4. Extra light amber34–50 mm — this honey
5. Light amber50–85 mm — this honey
6. Amber85–114 mm — this honey
7. Dark amber114+ mm

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, step 1 of 5, from very slow to very fast

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

• South America
• Brazil

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

Typical harvest

January to December (southern hemisphere)

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

A typical window for the honey type, HoneyHQ synthesis — not a calendar for any one place.

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.

Similar honeys and substitutes

Three different questions with different answers: a honey that tastes alike can behave differently in a recipe, and the same set texture says nothing about flavour. Each list is chosen from the recorded fields that matter to its question — and, where tasting panels or specifications described both honeys, the terms they share — and every suggestion says which, and what will be different. Compare it side by side or build a tasting flight.

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