Honey bees can be used to monitor PFAS levels in the environment, says study

Honey bees can be used to monitor levels of PFAS in the environment, a new study from The James Hutton Institute and the University of Graz appears to have shown.

PFAS, sometimes referred to as “forever chemicals”, are a group of more than 12,000 man-made chemicals which are used in everyday items such as frying pans and waterproof jackets. First popularised in the 1940s, these chemicals have since been linked to serious health concerns including cancer, fertility issues and liver damage. Due to their widespread use, background levels of PFAS are detectable across the world and can be found in plants, nectar, pollen and the atmosphere.

To monitor levels of PFAS in the environment, a team of researchers from The James Hutton Institute and the University of Graz sampled Western honey bee colonies in eastern Austria throughout the spring and summer of 2024.

Bees usually forage within 2km or 3km of their hive, making them an excellent indicator of local contamination. Additionally, the three-to-four-week lifespans of worker bees allow for analysis of PFAS levels across short periods of time.

Working with both scientists and citizen-scientist beekeepers, the team collected samples of forager bees, hive bees and pollen from six locations between April and August. These locations covered a diverse range of land uses (urban, semi-urban, rural, and agricultural), with samples collected every month. Each sample consisted of 20 bees, allowing researchers to check PFAS levels without damaging the wider colonies.

Detectable levels of PFAS were found in every sample type at every location, with nine different types discovered across 90 samples. On average, the highest concentrations of PFAS were found in hive bees, followed by forager bees and then pollen.

The findings also show that forager bees bring PFAS into the hive, either on their bodies or through contaminated resources such as nectar and pollen.

While the remains of wild boar and whales have been used by scientists at the University of Graz to monitor PFAS levels in the past, the study’s authors believe this is the first time honey bees have been used in the same way.

Their hope is that the methodology used in Austria can be utilised across Europe with international collaborations to create a continental PFAS monitoring network.

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The team also plans to conduct further research into the impact of PFAS on the honey bees.

Dr Viktoria Mueller, an environmental chemist at the Hutton and one of the study’s co-authors, said, “In comparison to other species previously used for monitoring PFAS, honey bees have a significantly shorter lifespan. Since they’re so short-lived, they’re excellent indicators of short-term acute contamination. All these short time periods then build up to give a proper idea of the changes in an environment.

“Their role as foragers and small foraging radius also makes them great bioindicators for PFAS contamination.

“Now, we need to work to understand the impact of PFAS on honey bees and why these changes in PFAS levels are occurring.”