Sugar profiles and conductivity of stingless bee honeys from Venezuela

Abstract

The HPLC sugar profiles and the conductivity of 42 stingless bee honey samples from Venezuela were determined. Three of the honey types were produced by Melipona species (n = 24), while the rest belonged mainly to five Trigona species. The main sugars of the Melipona honeys were fructose and glucose, with an average of 36.7 g/100 g. The Trigona (Frieseomelitta) honeys had a completely different sugar spectrum. There the principal sugar was a disaccharide with the retention time of maltose with an average content of 32.3 g/100 g, while fructose and glucose had smaller concentrations: 24.4 and 18.1 g/100 g respectively. The Melipona honeys contained also small quantities of maltose and only traces of oligosaccharides, while the Trigona honeys had small but measurable amounts of turanose, trehalose and erlose. The conductivity values of the Melipona honeys varied from 0.32 to 0.44 mS/cm and were significantly lower than those of the non-Melipona ones with minimum and maximum values of 1.04 and 1.07 mS/cm.