How honeybees can help us monitor pollution

The Science Behind the Story

Honey can be used to biomonitor contaminants, as honeybees can bioaccumulate both organic and inorganic (e.g., metal(loid)) contaminants from the total environment. Honey chemical composition can be influenced by natural and anthropogenic activities. Metal(loid) concentrations in honey samples collected by citizen scientist beekeepers in northwest England during fall 2018 were measured to assess potential sources from current and historical land use. Spatial distribution of honey metal(loid) concentrations was assessed using a geographic information system (GIS) using postal codes to identify beehive locations of citizen scientists and analyzed using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). GIS tools were used to correlate metal(loid) concentrations with local pollution point sources and soil geochemistry databases. The Greater Manchester area had higher mean As and Cd concentrations in honey (180 ug/kg and 398 ug/kg, respectively) compared to global means 25 ug/kg and 150 ug/kg, respectively), but mean honey Cu, Pb and Zn concentrations were lower (225 ug/kg, 260 ug/kg and 426 ug/kg, respectively) than global means (1005 ug/kg, 1470 ug/kg and 8545 ug/kg, respectively). Cadmium and Pb concentrations in honey measured in the Greater Manchester area were 398 and 260 ug/kg, respectively, which are up to two orders of magnitude higher than the recommended World Health Organization (WHO) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) guidelines, which may warrant further study to determine potential health impacts from honey consumption. Landscape analysis showed no correlation between metal(loid) contaminants and beehive location. This baseline study demonstrates that honey collected by citizen scientists can be used as an effective environmental biomonitoring tool to analyze metal(loid) contaminants in urban areas. The research paper is on ScienceDirect

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I thought it might be fun to get together 60 citizen scientist bee keepers, collect their honey and analysis it for pollution. It was super fun and we even got some science out of it, including a nice article for the general public.

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Canada has more than 13,000 beekeepers with almost 1,000,000 beehives spread across every province. Together, they produce about 40,000,000 kilograms of honey each year. That is enough for roughly one kilogram of honey for every Canadian.

When honeybees forage, they collect nectar, pollen and water from nearby flowers. These flowers contain traces of the chemicals in the soil and water where they grow.

As honeybees fly, they also pick up dust and other tiny particles from the air and any surfaces they touch. Some of these particles include metals from human activities like burning fossil fuels or industrial pollution.

By the time the bee has returned to its nest it is covered, inside and out, with the chemicals found in its local area. In this way, the honey in a beehive is a mix of everything the bees gather within about a three-kilometer area. Learning how to read the composition of honey will allow us to understand the chemical makeup of any given environment.

The honey produced by the tireless work of the honeybee is nothing short of an untapped goldmine of environmental data that could help us better understand the spread of environmental pollutants.

Our research — focusing on the Manchester area in the U.K. — proposes using honey as a window into the chemical make-up of a local area. Our team comprised of researchers from Dalhousie University in Canada and the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom. We measured metal concentrations in honey collected by citizen scientist beekeepers in northwest England.

Read the full article on The Conversation