Australian Native Bee Honey MEAD

[Shane'0 EM]

Hi all,
I'm sure it has been discussed before but I cant seem to find a lot of info in the forums.
I have a few hives of native bees (tetragonula carbonaria) to be exact, and I'm pretty keen to see how their honey will go in a mead. I'm still very new to mead making and have had good success in making very basic meads. I am just looking to get as much info as possible on the difference between using standard "run of the mill" honey to native honey straight from the hive.
If anyone has any recipes that would really enhance the botanics and citrus tones of my native honey that would be appreciated.
I am in SE QLD.

 

[madscientist451]

Thanks for posting, I thought honey was all the same, the only difference being the flavors from the type of flowers the bees were working on.
I was wrong about that, your honey is different and could have some heath benefits. As for recipes, I wouldn't add anything to it besides water, yeast nutrient and yeast and see what you've got. The TONSA yeast handling/nutrient schedule works pretty good for me.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-68940-0

 

[Shane'0 EM]

Thanks mate. I'm going to keep the recipe as basic and simple as possible. I really want the Native floral tones to shine through. Thanks for the link too. A lot in there that I wasn't aware of.
They are very interesting little things. I quite often find myself wasting time watching them come and go from the hives.

 

[madscientist451]

I found a study that used stingless bee honey from Brazil, which is probably different compared to yours in Australia, and another nugget of info on Reddit that says the stingless bee honey possibly has more water content.

 

[Shane'0 EM]

After I make a batch with the sugarbag honey I'm thinking about going a bit out there and adding in some of the pollen pots for the second batch. The pollen pots are like little balls of sweet, sometimes sour, sherbet. Does have a really "bushy" taste to it. maybe even adding the pollen pots after original fermentation has stopped. Who knows? I guess thats one advantage of making mead, plenty of time to think things through.