Use of honey bees as environmental sentinels has received wide acceptance in both the scientific and regulatory communities. The National Research Council judged honey bees to be "excellent monitors of air pollution", and concluded that other flying insects might be useful. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has classified the use of honey bees as a Class 1, off-the-shelf, in situ assessment method for monitoring exposures to aerial and soil-borne contaminants at hazardous waste sites.

We find bees to be efficient, inexpensive multi media monitors that can be deployed in many different ecosystems. We have used bees to monitor rural regions and cities, natural habitats and agricultural systems, under mild to severe climates, including semi arid deserts. Bees provide integrated samples of all three modes (gas, liquid, and particulate) in which pollutants may be transported. This integrating capability applies to a wide array of contaminants over time scales of a few hours to many weeks, and over spatial scales ranging from a specific waste site to entire landscapes and airsheds.

Although almost any component of the hive can be sampled, we find the most useful sample to be forager bees taken at the hive entrance. We close the hive entrance with nylon screening, then aspirate returning forager bees into sample bags using small vacuum. All samples are frozen until analyzed.

Pollen samples can be collected from cells in the hive or by mounting a trap on the hive. Chunks of honey and wax can be cut from combs. However, contaminant levels in wax vary with the age of the wax. In general, pollutant levels in honey tend to be orders of magnitude lower in honey than in pollen, wax, or the bees themselves.

References:

National Research Council, 1991. Animals as Sentinels of Environmental Health Hazards. National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.

Warren-Hicks, W., Parkhurst, B.R. and Baker, S.S., Jr. 1989. Ecological Assessments of Hazardous Waste Sites: A Field and Laboratory Reference Document. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Corvallis Environmental Research Laboratory, Corvallis, OR. EPA 600/3-89/013.