Differentiation of Honey from Melipona Species Using Differential Scanning Calorimetry
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Differentiation of Honey from Melipona Species Using Differential Scanning Calorimetry Yaneth Cardona 1 & Alexandra Torres 1 & Wolfgang Hoffmann 1 & Ingolf Lamprecht 2
Received: 27 July 2017 / Accepted: 27 October 2017 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2017
Abstract Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) was used to study the thermal behavior of Colombian honeys produced by the honey-bee Apis mellifera and by three species of stingless bees: Melipona fuscipes, Melipona favosa favosa, and Melipona compressipes. The honey samples were collected every 2 months over the course of year (August 2014 to August 2015). Up to four thermal transitions (trs1–trs4a, trs4b) were found in the honey samples: M. fuscipes (trs1–trs4a), M. favosa (trs1–trs4a, trs4b), M. compressipes (trs1, trs3, trs4a), and A. mellifera (trs1, trs3, trs4a). Statistical analyses showed significant differences in enthalpies of each transition between species; therefore, DSC analysis can be used as a finger-print to differentiate the honeys of species. Keywords Honey . Stingless bees . Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) . Melipona species . Apis mellifera
Introduction A third of the food that we consume is available due to pollination and about half of the insects that pollinate tropical plants are bees: these insects are probably best adapted to floral visits. It is the bee’s most important activity in terms of benefits for humans. Pollination is * Alexandra Torres [email protected]
1
Departamento de Química, Grupo de Biocalorimetría, Universidad de Pamplona, km 1 Vía Bucaramanga - Pamplona, Pamplona, Colombia
2
Free University of Berlin, Institute for Biology, Grunewaldstrasse 34, 12165 Berlin, Germany
not usually observed by non-specialists and is almost never appreciated. Bees visit flowers to suck nectar and use it to make honey, an important food that acts as a natural sweetening agent with high nutritional value (Michener 2007; Fuenmayor et al. 2013). Among the different classifications of bees, we find stingless bees: these are a tropical group with over 500 species living in every tropical and subtropical region in the world. They are known as Bstingless bees^ because the sting and associate structures of the female bee are greatly reduced. These insects produce honey called Bpot-honey^ because the container in which they store the honey has the shape of a pot (Fig. 1). The stingless bees which produce the most honey are found in the Melipona species which live only in Central and South America and are extremely sensitive to changes in the environment. Their honey is greatly appreciated, not only as food, but also as medicine. Publications about the study of honeys are few: most of them are descriptions of the kind of pot-honeys, such as physicochemical or microbial and nutritional analyses, as well as studies of its metal and flavonoid content, and antibacterial properties. These studies were performed in several countries including Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Venezuela, and Peru on hon
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