Uso da melissopalinologia na identificação da origem do mel de Melipona scutellaris L., 1811

Abstract

The identification of the botanical species visited by the bees during the nectar collection consists of an important parameter for the botanical and geographical origin of the honey. Due to the lack of information about the bee plants that contribute to the formation of the honeys produced in the “Brejo” microregion of Paraiba State, Brazil, this study aimed to evaluate the hypothesis of honey production with the use of Musa spp. for the production of honey in the region. The samples were collected from twenty distinct hives, being taken from each hive three samples of honeys, with the aid of sterile syringes and placed in sterile plastic containers, to avoid contamination, being properly identified and stored at room temperature. The analyses were conducted at the Laboratory of Beekeeping and Sericulture of the Center for Agricultural Sciences of the Federal University of Paraiba, Campus II, Areia-PB. The types of pollen for the elaboration of the Reference pollen slide assembly were taken from the flowers collected during visits at the meliponary, which was the object of comparison with the samples obtained directly from the analyzed honey. For the preparation and assembling of the reference pollen and for the pollen analysis, was used the method of Acetolysis, according to Laín e Ferreras (1999). The data were analyzed by non-parametric statistics, using the Shapiro-Wilk test showing the normality of the samples and the Wilcoxon test for the independent samples. In quantitative analysis, were observed the presence of dominant pollen (72.16%), pollen accessory (17.81%), important isolated pollen (7.03%) and occasional isolated pollen (2.99%). The results showed that there was a difference between the dominant pollen and all the other classes of pollen at the level of 5% by the Wilcoxon test, thus the dominance of the pollen grain of Musa spp. is confirmed in 100% of the samples.