Pesticide distribution and depletion kinetic determination in honey and beeswax: Model for pesticide occurrence and distribution in beehive products

PLoS One. 2019 Feb 20;14(2):e0212631. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0212631. eCollection 2019.

Abstract

Beehive products such as honey, beeswax and recently pollen have been regarded for many years as appropriate sentinels for environmental pesticide pollutions. However, despite yearly application of hundreds of approved pesticides in agricultural fields, only a minor fraction of these organic compounds were actually detected in honey and beeswax samples. This observation has led us to question the general suitability of beehive products as a sentinel for synthetic organic pesticides applied in the field. The aim of the present study was to experimentally determine the distribution (logarithmic ratio of beeswax to honey pesticide concentration, LogD) and depletion kinetics (half-life) of selected pesticides in honey and beeswax as a measure of the latter matrixes to serve as a pesticide sentinel. The obtained parameters were used to extrapolate to pesticide burden in honey and beeswax samples collected from German and Israeli apiaries. In addition, we aimed to establish a mathematical model, enabling us to predict distribution of selected pesticides between honey to beeswax, by utilizing simple substance descriptors, namely, octanol/water partitioning coefficient, molar weight and Henry coefficient. Based on the present results, it appears that pesticides with LogD values > 1 and half-life in beeswax > 1 day, were likely to accumulate and detected in beeswax samples, and less likely to be found in honey. On the other hand, pesticides with negative LogD values were highly likely to be found in honey and less so in beeswax samples. Finally, pesticides with LogD values between 0-1 were expected to be found in both matrixes. The developed model was successfully applied to predict LogD values, thereby identifying octanol/water partitioning and molar weight as the most prominent substance descriptors, which affect pesticide distribution between honey and beeswax.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Bees
  • Environmental Pollutants / analysis
  • Food Analysis
  • Food Contamination / analysis
  • Honey / analysis*
  • Pesticides / analysis*
  • Tandem Mass Spectrometry
  • Waxes / analysis*

Substances

  • Environmental Pollutants
  • Pesticides
  • Waxes
  • beeswax

Grants and funding

Dr. Jakob Shimshoni is a young PI, who joined the Volcani Institute as a young researcher in May 2017. Every young scientist receives from the Volcani Institute seed money for two years. This latter budget was used for financing the analytical services provided by Bilacon GMbH. Otherwise no additional financial support was provided. Dr. Jakob Shimshoni, whose budget was used for financing the analytical services provided by Bilacon GMbH, receives regardless of the present project, salary from the Volcani Institute, Israel. Bilacon GMbH provided support in the form of salaries for author RS, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific role of this author is articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section.