Honey bee colonies are a proven multi faceted biomonitoring tool for assessing environmental risks of hazardous substances. Unlike almost any other animal species, (Apis mellifera) occurs globally. Millions of colonies spread across the hemisphere and around the world provide an in-place monitoring network. Where bees are not kept, small disposable monitoring colonies can be used.

The economic and ecologic importance of these pollinators make them one of the most studied invertebrates; their physiology and behavior under a variety of chemical exposures is relatively well documented. While foraging they sample all environmental media soil, water, air and vegetation (nectar, pollen) over a wide area. Twenty years of development of bees as biomonitors has permitted us to estimate the variability and sensitivity of tests of chemical substances as well as the development of dynamic, interactive models of bee colonies exposed to natural and anthropogenic stresses.

Reprinted from: Biomonitors and Biomarkers as Indicators of Environmental Change, Plenum Press, 1995

Tri-Cities, Washington,, 2D kriging estimates of arsenic in forager bees. Areas demonstrating somewhat elevated arsenic concentrations are probably a result of applications of inorganic pesticides during the early 1900s.

2D kriging estimates in parts per million for arsenic concentrations in honey bees throughout the Puget Sound region, Washington.

3D kriging estimates in parts per million for arsenic concentrations in forager bees. At the time of these studies, arsenic was being released into the atmosphere from a custom copper smelter west of Tacoma.

Our results indicated longer-range transport of this contaminant than any previously reported. After the smelter ceased operations, our results were verified by a decrease in the amounts of arsenic detected by hi-volume air samplers in Victoria, British Columbia.