Honey has been long known as the world's original natural sweetener. A by-product of bees honey is a sweet syrupy by product of bees that have been used by people around the world for thousands of years both as a sweetener and medicinal product. The two most common types of honey bees around the world is the European honey bee and the Stingless honey bee.
European Honey Bees
The European honey bee also called the Western honey bee's scientific name is Apis Mellifera Linnaeus. These bees are naturally found throughout Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Africa. This species of bee is divided into 20 different subspecies. Manuka honey comes from European honey bees and the honey is named after the plant that these bees tend to prefer.
While some subspecies of European honey bees do not have stingers, most of them do. These honey bees are also quite large and tend to swarm easily (Although some subspecies are more aggressive than others) They are also susceptible to a number of diseases that have been known to wipe out entire hives.
Stingless Bees (Trigona / Melipona)
The Stingless Bees are either classified as Trigona (Tetragonula) or Melipona and can be found in tropical and subtropical regions including Australia, Africa, South East Asia, and parts of Mexico and Brazil. Like the European honey bee there are several subspecies of this species of bee. Honey from different subspecies of stingless bees make various types of honey. For example Malaysia stingless bee honey is locally known as Kelulut while stingless bee honey from the Philippines is locally known as Kiyot honey. The term "Trigona" honey is named not for a plant, but the bee species itself.
Fun Fact: The term "Trigona" was replaced with "Tetragonula" in 2013 to encompass a broader reclassification of stingless bees based on DNA studies conducted in 2007. These studies revealed significant differences among the species previously categorised under the genus Trigona.
But here at Anaya we keep the term "Trigona" as an ode to when we first started in 2013, and term that has become synonymous with our brand.
Trigona bees tend to smaller than their European counterpart and are black in color, not the yellow and black color found in European bees. While they can become aggressive if threatened they tend to be more relaxed than their Western counterparts. They also seem to be healthier than European bees as well.
Like Manuka honey Trigona honey differs in taste from region to region and even from distances as close to just a few miles due to the different types of plants from which the bees collect nectar and pollen.
General Benefits of Honey
Honey provides a number of benefits to humans. While raw honey has more benefits than processed honey both provide certain benefits including:
Honey contains amino acids, vitamins and minerals. It is a nutritional rich food that supplies much of what the body needs.
Honey also has anti-oxidants which help to control free radicals and protects the body from cell damage. Anti-oxidants can help slow signs of ageing as well help prevent cancer and heart disease.
Honey has anti-bacterial and anti-fungal properties. It also can help heal wounds helping prevent you from contacting bacterial and fungal infections.
Honey also helps to soothe sore throats and can aid in cough suppression.
Can help treat allergies
Benefits of Stingless Bee Honey from Anaya
Anaya's Trigona honey is better for you than manuka honey because it is infused with propolis that the bees use to make their hives with. This results in our honey containing more nutrients, with more anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and antioxidant properties than Manuka honey. This means that this honey can provide you with a much healthier immune system that will help you fight a number of different diseases more efficiently.
Our Trigona honey from Trigona bees has the highest anti-oxidant and anti-bacterial properties of Trigona honey from other regions such as Malaysia or South America. We are the only brand that sends our honey to an independent laboratory for testing. The results is showed that our trigona honey killed 83% of bad bacteria. In fact other universities have also done test which support this.
Anaya's Stingless Bees Are Not Raised To Be Honey Producers
Do you know how much honey does a hive of Apis Mellifera honeybees produce? It is 30 kilograms or 66 pounds of honey a year per hive.
Now guess how much honey does a stingless bee hive produce in a year? The answer is 500 grams or 1.1 pound of honey a year per hive. Yes that little!
Which is why for us, these precious stingless bees are not raised as honey producers, but rather as a pollinators. Stingless bees are also sometimes called 'native bees' particularly in Australia - for a reason. They are native to the land and are excellent at pollinating local species of plants - and in the Philippines these would include as coconut, mango, tamarind, calamansi and pineapple. In fact the farmers that our beekeepers work with, see their crop yield increase by 40% just through this pollination process itself!
Why does stingless bee honey taste sour?
An unique characteristic of stingless bee honey is its sourness. Trigona honey from stingless bees can taste vastly different due to the different plants that these stingless bees get their nectar from. And the sourness of the stingless bee honey will differ because of each stingless bee species is different, and they own preference for different nectar sources.
For example in some areas of Malaysia the the Heterotrigona itama variety produces a honey that has a sweeter tasting note. This is because the bees predominantly visits Solanaceae flowers, with 83.33% of its pollen load derived from this family. While Anaya's species of stingless bees called Tetragonula biroi prefers coconut, mango and tamarind nectars. It's really interesting to see each species having their own personality!
Here at Anaya even our Trigona honey has a different taste from one batch to the next because this company works with various farmers to pollinate their crops. Some of the crops these bees are used to pollinate (and get their nectar from) includes mangos, pineapple, tamarind Calamansi, coconut, banana, and occasionally lychee.
While these different plants all can change the taste of our Trigona honey, overall, this honey has sweet fruity taste that people love.
Enjoy our honey and its health benefits
It is vitally important to provide bees to pollinate crops, since the population of the world depends on crops for a large majority of their food. Anaya's stingless bees provide an organic way for farmers to pollinate their crops and keep them healthy so that there is enough food grown to help feed the world without the use of any artificial means or chemicals.
Just a couple of boxes (hives) is all that is needed to pollinate large farms although Trigona bees rarely fly more than a few miles from their home base.
If you have never tried our Trigona honey you really should. Not only will you be consuming a delicious healthy sweet treat, but you will be using a product from the hard little workers that are helping maintain the world's food supply of delicious fruits and vegetables.
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