Abstract
Abstract For thousands of years, honey from stingless bees, mainly from Melipona beecheii, has been recognized as part of traditional Mayan medicine in the Mesoamerican region. Currently Melipona honey is the subject of research due to its nutritional, therapeutic and commercial value. Studies have been conducted to characterize Melipona honey produced on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula in, but the results have been limited. The low production and botanical-geographical origin of the honey increases the variability of the results and also the real number of Melipona beekeepers in the area is unknown so we are unable to conduct a statistically representative sampling and enough information to establish a generalization of the information. Therefore, we reviewed the published articles that describe the physicochemical and microbiological characteristics of the honey of some species of the genus Melipona. The information analyzed indicated that some of these characteristics are out of the specifications established by the standard that applies to Apis mellifera honey, without this meaning that it is of lesser quality and therefore. Because production and commercialization of this product is prospering, physicochemical and microbiological standards must be established to avoid adulteration and complications to public health, since this product is widely used for therapeutic purposes.
Highlights
The genus Melipona includes some forty known species of stingless honey bees (Michener, 2007)
Similar results reported by Sousa et al (2016) for M. subnida and M. scutellaris honeys indicated that the samples were collected and stored under adequate conditions, and that stingless bee honey was more resistant to HMF formation than A. mellifera honey when it was heated (Biluca et al, 2016)
Values as high as 21.29, 8.31 and 10.04 units are referred by Dardón & Enríquez (2008) for honeys of M. beecheii, M. solani and M. yucatanica, most researchers report < 3.00 units, reducing the diastase standard to this value is proposed by Vit et al (2004), based on previous studies that show that honey of the genus Melipona presents low values without necessarily meaning a lack of quality
Summary
The genus Melipona includes some forty known species of stingless honey bees (Michener, 2007). (2007), reported that from samples collected observed in Tab. 2, the concentration of reducing in Brazil’s Amazon region the average values sugars varies, and in some cases the minimum of fructose, glucose and sucrose were 31.91%, amount was quantified as established by Codex
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