Contribución al conocimiento de las características fisicoquímicas y térmicas de mieles de siete especies de abejas sin aguijón presentes en Norte de Santander (Colombia), aplicando análisis multivariado.

Abstract

In this work, physicochemical properties of honey samples, collected during a year, by M. fuscipes, M. favosa, M. compressipes, T. angustula, T. nigra, Scaptotrigona sp., Nannotrigona sp. and Apis mellifera, were carried out according to the methodology established by the NTC 1273. Additionally, thermal properties were determined by TGA-DSC. Thermal analysis showed the presence of four thermal transitions trs1, trs2, trs3, trs4a y trs4b by heating the honey samples from room temperature up to 260 oC. These results were used to perform a multivariate chemometric treatment, finding that the enthalpy within species did not change significantly during the year of sampling; but between species there were significant differences. These results show that the differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) can be used to distinguish honey from each species (fingerprint), and to determine whether it has been adulterated. The physicochemical properties of honeys of different species were determined, and these results were used to perform the principal component analysis and discriminant analysis, which allowed determining that the honey samples were correctly classified 97.2% using the moisture, refractive index, total sugars, total acidity, diastase activity, pH and HMF amount. This classification, showed that the honey produced by bees of the same genus, have significant differences and do not have similar physicochemical properties, even being in the same geographic location. This may indicate that the process of making honey depends largely on the procedure that each species of bees in particular makes, and in minor proportion of floral resources they use.