ABSTRACT

The products of honey bees can be used as indicators and monitors of a variety of environmental pollutants because of the bees’ ability to collect materials that reflect their immediate environmental conditions. The area covered by honey bees in their nectar-or honeydew-gathering process can be presented as a circle with a few kilometers radius. It seems that the honey could be a good random sample, representative of a broad area. Radionuclides, cations, and chemical compounds deposited as fallout due to global atmospheric pollution or as constitutive elements or trace elements of soil can migrate upwards by plant uptake. Concentrations of 137Cs in various honey types during the 1990s in Croatia are presented in this report. The results of analyses of honey samples archived in Austria, Germany, and Slovenia from 1952 through 1995 provide an intriguing and unique history of 137Cs pollution in Europe. The research also documents the levels of 137Cs, 40K, Ca, Fe, Rb, Sr, Cu, Zn, Pb, Ni, Mn, and Cr in soils, coniferous tree branches, and honey, and compares the transfer from soil into nectar honey, mixtures of nectar and honeydew honey, and honeydew honey in fir and spruce forests in Croatia. For all of the elemental concentrations investigated, no significant differences, at level P 0.05, were found between honeydew honey and mixed honey, regardless of the soil type where the honey was collected from. Elemental transfer factors from soils into nectar honey were significantly lower than those for honeydew honey.