Seek and you shall find: An assessment of the influence of the analytical methodologies on pesticide occurrences in honey bee-collected pollen with a systematic review

Characterization of Insect–Pollinator Biodiversity in Agrochemical-Contaminated Agricultural Habitats

“…Some insecticides affect non-targeted insects, including INPOs, because of their broad spectrum. [7,10,13,16,[19][20][21] Herbicides Applied in farms to control and suppress the germination and growth of weeds. They keep fields free of invasive weeds since weeds compete with crops for nutrients, water, light, and space with crops or native plants.…”

“…Their potential to induce flower abscission can cause the dwindling of INPOs' food resources. [3,13,14] INPOs such as bees, hoverflies, and butterflies could be threatened by the increasing use of harmful agrochemicals (Table 2), such as neonicotinoid pesticides [3,27], which have an adverse impact on non-target species [7,8,10,28]. They can be exposed to agrochemicals in different ways: through air particles, eating contaminated food (nectar or pollen), and consuming contaminated water [4,10,29].…”

“…This implies that a loss of INPOs as pollen transfer vectors may concomitantly lead to a decline in agricultural output, particularly for pollinator-dependent crops [3,8,9]. Despite being vital to life on our planet, compelling evidence from both past and present studies indicates that INPOs are becoming less common in agricultural habitats [3,10]. Apart from a multitude of factors such as exotic invasive species and infections that contribute to their demise or decline [11,12], agrochemicals (Table 1) have also been linked to the decline of INPOs [7,9,13,14].…”

“…Apart from a multitude of factors such as exotic invasive species and infections that contribute to their demise or decline [11,12], agrochemicals (Table 1) have also been linked to the decline of INPOs [7,9,13,14]. Increased agrochemical inputs decrease the effectiveness of INPO communities in providing ecological services [10,15,16]. This is because most, if not all, INPOs are very sensitive to exposure to various agrochemicals [7,13,17].…”

Honeybee Pollen as a Bioindicator of Contamination: An Overview

“…Besides all of these positive effects and high biological and nutritive value, bee pollen can contain hazardous trace elements, pesticide residues (Ambrus et al, 2020;Bostan et al, 2019;Toselli and Sgolastra, 2020), toxic metals and metalloids (Spirić et al, 2019;Ćirić et al, 2021;Murashova et al, 2020;Roman, 2009), moulds and mycotoxins (Alarcón et al, 2019), pyrrolizidine alkaloids (Botías et al, 2015), allergens (Pitsios et al, 2006;Nonotte-Varly, 2016) and GM (genetically modified) foods (Malone, 2002). To ensure the safety and quality of bee pollen, some counties issued national legislations, decisions and guidelines which correlate with European and International standards.…”