Study On Bee Products As Bio-Indicators For Environmental Pollution Evaluation

Biological monitoring technology is one of the hot issues about environmental pollution monitoring research in recent years. The research of using the sensitivity of organism to environmental changes as biological indicator the level of environmental pollution has practical significances, while the unique biological characteristics of bee determine that bee and bee products can be a reliable, sensitive and economical environmental pollution bio-indicator. This research uses honey and bee pollen as representative of bee products; PAHs and some heavy metal elements as representatives of environmental pollutants respectively. Firstly, methods for the detection of persistent organic pollutant(PAHs) and heavy metal in bee products and environmental medium will be developed and optimized, and exploration of the correlation of pollutants in bee products and environmental medium will be carried out by areas different pollution levels. This study verifies that bee product is an ideal environmental bio-indicator that provides a new technological model for the evaluation of environmental pollution in apiculture.This research can be divided into two parts.The first part mainly focuses on the research on how bee products indicating PAHs in the environment. A rapid analytical method was developed first based on Qu ECh ERS sample preparation and GC-MS of the analysis of 16 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons(PAHs) in bee pollen and honey. The targeted compounds were extracted with acetonitrile solution under the no buffer system conditions and were purified with anhydrous Mg SO4, PSA, C18, Florisil packing powder, and finally, 16 PAHs were analyzed by GC-MS. Under optimal conditions, the detection limits of PAHs were between 0.2~3.3 μg/kg, the average recoveries of most PAHs were in the range of 61.0%~135.4%, and the relative standard deviations(RSDs) were below 11.8%. In addition, in order to obtain good stability and precision, we optimized the chromatographic conditions of PAHs in soil samples. The detection limits of PAHs were between 0.4~1.8 μg/kg. The results of actual samples demonstrate that the PAHs in environmental media can migrate through food chain or other channels to bee pollen and honey. By comprehensive analysis, bee pollen can be used as a biological to indicate environmental pollution condition, and we can judge the level of environmental pollution by analyzing the types and content of PAHs in honey or bee pollen from a certain area. Low content of PAHs in honey, demonstrates that it is not suitable for indicating environmental pollution quantificationally.The second part mainly focuses on the research of heavy metals in bee products indicate environmental pollution. This study accurately detected 11 kinds of common heavy metals including Cr/52, Mn/55, Fe/56, Co/59, Ni/60, Cu/65, Zn/66, Mo/95, Ag/107, Cd/114 and Pb/208 by the ICP-MS technique with digestion, then statistical analyses were used to analyze the heavy metal contents in environmental medium and bee products from different areas with different pollution levels, we find that the contents in acacia plant are lower than that in soil generally, and almost no obvious difference the sampling areas were observed. The content of heavy metals in soil increases with the degree of environmental pollution, and the result is in line with the change trend detected in bee pollen, and the strong correlation of heavy metals are conducted between bee pollen and its corresponding environmental medium. Bee pollen is more suitable for indicating the environmental pollution as a bio-indicator. While the content of heavy metals in honey is lower than other bee products, but we can find that the element of Co, Fe, Mo in honey sample are good indicators of environmental pollution by deep research.In conclusion, bee pollen is more suitable for indicating the environmental pollution as a bio-indicator, while honey is not suitable for indicating PAHs pollution. However, the element of Co, Fe, Mo in honey samples are good indicators of environmental pollution. This study provides a new technological model for the evaluation of environmental pollution and a new idea to expand its application in apiculture.