{"id":98,"date":"2025-08-15T17:34:43","date_gmt":"2025-08-15T17:34:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fhcus.com\/?p=98"},"modified":"2025-08-15T17:34:44","modified_gmt":"2025-08-15T17:34:44","slug":"healthy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fhcus.com\/?p=98","title":{"rendered":"Healthy sugar origin in bee honey revealed"},"content":{"rendered":"

The mystery of what creates the rare, healthy sugar found in stingless bee honey, has been solved by researchers at The University of Queensland, in collaboration with Queensland Health Forensic and Scientific Services.<\/p>\n

The team found that the sugar trehalulose \u2013 which is not found in other honey or as a major component in other food \u2013 is produced in the gut of the bees.<\/p>\n

UQ organic chemist and research leader, Dr Natasha Hungerford said the origin of this rare sugar had been a puzzle since the discovery of high levels of sugar trehalulose<\/a> in stingless bee honey.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did not know if the trehalulose was coming from an external source \u2013 perhaps from native flora,\u201d Dr Hungerford said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt could have been something in the resin from trees that stingless bees collect and take home to their nest – because unlike European honey bees, which store their honey in honeycomb made only from beeswax, stingless bees store their honey in small pots made from a mix of beeswax and tree resins.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stingless bees are found throughout tropical and subtropical parts of the world.<\/p>\n

The larger, European honey bees (Apis mellifera<\/em>) produce significantly more honey, and are the world\u2019s major honey production species.<\/p>\n

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However, stingless bee honey which is highly prized as a specialty food, is noted in Indigenous cultures for its medicinal properties and attracts a high price.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrehalulose is more slowly digested and there is not the sudden spike in blood glucose that you get from other sugars,\u201d Dr Hungerford said.<\/p>\n

She said the UQ team was keen to determine if the trehalulose content in stingless bee honey could be increased, potentially making stingless bee honey more valuable.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe fed confined colonies of the Australian stingless bee Tetragonula carbonaria<\/em> the most common sugars found in flower nectar – sucrose, glucose and fructose.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we found is that stingless bees have a unique capacity to convert sucrose to trehalulose and produce honey rich in trehalulose in their gut.\u201d<\/p>\n

Native plants such as Grevillea and Banksia are believed to have nectar high in sucrose, and it is believed bees feeding from these plants will naturally produce honey rich in trehalulose.<\/p>\n

The team also found that stingless bees fed a solution containing table sugar could convert it into a \u2018honey\u2019 containing high levels of trehalulose.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the \u2018honey\u2019 they produce from table sugar does not meet the requirements of real stingless bee honey which is made from nectar,\u201d Dr Hungerford said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe honey we produced in the lab is in fact fake honey, and we were able to distinguish it from natural honey by isotopic testing.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThis trehalulose-rich syrup that was produced might be considered a potential secondary product of stingless bees, but it is not honey.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is also not good for the health of the hive to feed the bees only table sugar.<\/p>\n

\u201cHoney contains a complex range of phytochemicals from nectar, making it vitally important for brood rearing and the expansion of the colony population.\u201d<\/p>\n

The UQ team will now work to identify different horticultural crops that have nectar high in sucrose.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to investigate the nectar sugars present in crops such as macadamia, lychee and avocado, and whether stingless bee pollination of these crops could result in a high level of trehalulose in their honey,\u201d Dr Hungerford said.<\/p>\n

The research was funded by AgriFutures Australia, Queensland Health, Department of Agriculture and Fisheries and the Australian Native Bee Association.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The mystery of what creates the rare, healthy sugar found in stingless bee honey, has been solved by researchers at The University of Queensland, in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1577,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[17,18],"class_list":["post-98","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fruit-varieties","tag-organic","tag-sweet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fhcus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fhcus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fhcus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fhcus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fhcus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/fhcus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1579,"href":"https:\/\/fhcus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions\/1579"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fhcus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fhcus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fhcus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fhcus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}