Assay of carbaryl in honey bees (apis mellifera) by high-performance liquid chromatography

Abstract

A method for detecting and measuring carbaryl in poisoned honey bees (100 ng per bee) using high-performance liquid chromatography is described. Clean-up of extracts on a Florisil column removed all substances that interfered with fluorescence detection and most that affected ultraviolet detection at 215 nm.

Gas chromatography of carbaryl derivatives was not consistently useful because bee constituents interfered either with the formation of derivatives or with detection. Only the N-acetyl derivative was formed quantitatively in the presence of cleaned-up bee extracts, but the nitrogen-specific detector was sometimes, and the electron-capture detector always, subject to interference from bee constituents remaining after clean-up.