The next NT branch meeting will be held on Monday 4 March in the Zuccoli Meeting Room. Just a reminder, access to the room is by walking through the breezeway next to the Rainmaker Cafe and turning left.

Join NT branch members online from Darwin as Dr Natasha Hungerford talks us through her native bee honey research virtually from Queensland. Presentation on 4 March 2024 via MS Teams at 6.00pm Darwin time (ACST):

Reserve your spot by contacting Kate at synergyresins@gmail.com.

Dr Natasha Hungerford is an organic chemist with extensive experience in natural products chemistry. Her work on stingless bee (Meliponini) honey has extended to the analyses of beneficial components in this honey, including novel sugars

Bioactives in stingless bee honey

A recent focus has been the analysis of the properties of stingless bee honey, particularly the unique sugar content of these honeys, with this work culminating in grants from AgriFutures Australia and the Malaysian Government International Collaborative Fund (led by Universiti Putra Malaysia). LCMS technologies, ion chromatography, and stable isotope MS techniques have been used in collaboration with Queensland Health with the aims of optimising stingless bee honey bioactive content. This work provided the first report of the atypical disaccharide trehalulose as a major component of the honey of stingless bees (Meliponini) from Australia (2 species), Malaysia (2 species) and Brazil (1 species). Our research has shown that the low GI sugar trehalulose, which is not found significantly in regular honey or as a major component in any other food, is produced by the bees themselves from nectar sucrose. Further studies seek to understand the mechanism of this bee catalysed isomerisation of sucrose to trehalulose.