BEE-L Archives

Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology

BEE-L@COMMUNITY.LSOFT.COM

Options: Use Monospaced Font
Show Text Part by Default
Show All Mail Headers

Message: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Topic: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Author: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]

Print Reply
Subject:
From:
Peter Armitage <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Tue, 29 Jan 2019 09:05:02 -0500
Content-Type:
text/plain
Parts/Attachments:
text/plain (16 lines)
Here’s an interesting recently published paper re. unifloral honey and the challenges of melissopalynology. 

Sniderman JMK, Matley KA, Haberle SG, Cantrill DJ (2018) Pollen analysis of Australian honey. PLoS ONE 13(5): e0197545. 
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0197545&type=printable

Note mention of a pollen reference collection: “Pollen was identified by reference to the author’s modern pollen reference collection…”

It certainly seems, based on what I’ve read thus far, that one needs access to, or needs to create, a local pollen reference library in order to do pollen analysis of floral sources in honey.

“[I]t is perhaps not surprising that a pollen analytical study commissioned by Australia’s Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation, and carried out by a prominent European food testing consultancy, found that of 20 Australian honey samples described by beekeepers as unifloral Eucalyptus or Corymbia honeys (that is, in theory, honeys produced primarily from the nectar of a single species), seven were not accepted as unifloral Eucalyptus honeys. Of these seven, four were considered primarily ‘blossom’ honeys or honeydew honeys, and one was not accepted as Eucalyptus honey at all. The reason for this scepticism by European melissopalynologists was presumably that pollen they identified as Eucalyptus did not constitute a sufficiently high proportion of the total pollen in these honeys. International Honey Commission criteria for accepting Eucalyptus unifloral honeys are based on examination of 208 European-Mediterranean honey accessions…. One likely explanation for this difference is that eucalypt honeys produced in the Mediterranean region are derived from very few species. By comparison, in Australia there are ~800 species of Eucalyptus, dozens of which may be used by beekeepers. ” Etc.

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html

ATOM RSS1 RSS2