Overview
Trimmel and colleagues measured 48 elements by ICP-MS/MS in honeybees, pollen, propolis, wax, honeycomb and honey from one apiary in Leoben, Austria, over three campaigns in 2021 and 2022. Element levels generally fell in the order propolis > bees > pollen > wax, honeycomb and honey. The main text tabulates only nine technology-critical elements; the full dataset, including lead, cadmium and arsenic, is in an online supplement.
Key numbers
- Bee pollen: antimony “22” ng/g (s 11), thallium “2.12” ng/g (s 0.88), bismuth “6.4” ng/g (s 2.1) (Table 2, p. 196).
- Honey: antimony “5” ng/g, thallium “0.47” ng/g (Table 2).
- Propolis had the highest antimony (62 ng/g) and bismuth (22.6 ng/g) (Table 2).
Methods (brief)
Samples were digested by microwave in nitric acid (with hydrogen peroxide for some matrices) and read on a NexION 5000 ICP-MS/MS with nitrous oxide as reaction gas. Limits came from four procedural blanks per batch. A spinach-leaf CRM and a sucrose-based in-house reference material checked accuracy.
Evidence Fitness
Strong analytical QA, but this is a single-site biomonitoring study with very few field samples (pollen came from one sample in each of two campaigns). The n in Table 2 counts digests, not samples. The pollen is hive-collected, not retail, but it is bee pollen, so the bee-pollen page is linked. Lead, cadmium and arsenic results are only in the supplement, which was not available, so the extraction holds trace technology-critical elements only.