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. 2020 Oct;265(Pt A):114882.
doi: 10.1016/j.envpol.2020.114882. Epub 2020 Jun 2.

Usefulness of bee bread and capped brood for the assessment of monocyclic aromatic hydrocarbon levels in the environment

Katarzyna Zięba  1 , Elżbieta Szostak  2 , Krystyna Czekońska  3 , Paweł Miśkowiec  4 , Agnieszka Moos-Matysik  5 , Anna Nyczyk-Malinowska  6 , Hajnalka Szentgyörgyi  7
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Free article

Usefulness of bee bread and capped brood for the assessment of monocyclic aromatic hydrocarbon levels in the environment

Katarzyna Zięba et al. Environ Pollut. 2020 Oct.
Free article

Abstract

Monitoring airborne pollutants, like aromatic hydrocarbons, are raising more and more concerns recently. Various sampling techniques and methods are known to collect, measure, and analyse environmental pollution levels based on honey bee bodies or bee product samples. Although honey bees are studied in detail and sampling methods are becoming more and more sophisticated biological samples may significantly differ in pollutant accumulation, showing a wide range of pollution levels even in the same site and environment. We have compared the pollution levels of honey bee capped brood and bee bread (pollen collected by honey bees and deposited in the hive) originating from four sites during two years of study and twelve honey bee families near various pollution sources emitting monocyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (BTEX) to the environment. Our result showed, that the environmental monitoring of BTEX can be based on sampling honey bees, and bee bread in particular. However, we found a significant difference in the uptake of these pollutants regarding sample type. Pollen collected as a food source revealed consistently higher levels of BTEX than bee brood, as well as some other differences in pollution levels between samples and between seasons, as opposed to capped brood. Based on our results, we suggest that for measuring and monitoring of BTEX pollution in the environment the use of bee bread is a valuable source of information.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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