Marmeleiro honey
Light and clean with a soft floral sweetness and a faint resinous edge from the scrub — approachable and characteristic of caatinga honey generally.
Mel de marmeleiro
A honey from the caatinga, the thorn scrub of northeastern Brazil, and specifically from marmeleiro, a croton shrub that flowers after rain in one of the driest inhabited landscapes in South America. It is pale and delicately floral, and the beekeeping that produces it is a significant livelihood in a region with very few alternatives.
Flavour and aroma
- Aroma
- light florals, dry scrub, faint resin
- Flavour
- soft floral, light resin, clean sweetness
- Finish
- Short and clean.
- Intensity
- Mild
- Sweetness
- Sweet
- Bitterness
- None
- Acidity
- Moderate
Colour, texture and crystallisation
- Colour
- Extra light amber (34-50 mm Pfund)Light amber (50-85 mm Pfund)
Pale gold, clear and bright.
On setting: Sets to a pale opaque cream.
- Texture
- Runny; Soft set; Thick but pourable
- Crystallisation
Moderate — granulates over a few months
A moderate fine set.
Typical composition
- Moisture
- 15–19% (typically 17%)
- Fructose
- 36–42% (typically 39%)
- Glucose
- 29–35% (typically 32%)
- pH
- 3.5–4.3 (typically 3.9)
- Electrical conductivity
- 0.2–0.6 mS/cm (typically 0.35 mS/cm)
These are typical ranges assembled across published work, not measurements of a specific honey.
What these mean: the sugars and the ratio · moisture · conductivity · how each is measured
Where it comes from
- Floral source
- Croton species, marmeleiro, in caatinga thorn scrub across the Brazilian northeast.
- Origins
- Ceará, Piauí, Bahia, Rio Grande do Norte and Paraíba, northeastern Brazil.
- Origin pages
Resolved from both directions — origins this honey names, and origins that name it.
- Harvest
- June to September (southern hemisphere)
A dry-season flow, with flowering triggered by the preceding rains.
- The bees
- Brazilian beekeeping works Africanized bees exclusively, and the northeast is where the practical adaptations to them were largely worked out. Native stingless bees are also kept in the caatinga in a separate tradition.
- Usual processing
- Raw, Coarsely strained, Spun (centrifugally extracted), Filtered
Caatinga beekeeping is a substantial rural livelihood in a semi-arid region with limited agricultural alternatives, and much of it is organised through cooperatives. Brazil is a major honey exporter.
What to do with it
An everyday honey and a major northeastern Brazilian product.
At the tableSpreadingIn hot drinksBaking
Pairings
- Queijo coalho and fresh cheesesClassic
The regional pairing.
- Tapioca and cassava breads
The local staple.
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
Beekeeping in the Brazilian northeast expanded substantially from the 1970s as a development strategy for the semi-arid interior, and it is one of the more successful such programmes.
Sources
- HoneyHQ editorial synthesis — HEKNO Ltd · HoneyHQ synthesis
How sources are selected and weighted is set out in the sources and evidence policy.
Tools for choosing and using honey
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