Development and optimization of a multi-residue method for pesticide analysis in honey bee using Simplex method

Pesticide application near to beekeeping areas can affect the survival of the bees and the quality of the products derived of the hive, therefore it is of great importance to assess the residual of these agrochemicals in honey and other bee products. So many methods have been developed for determining pesticide residues in honey samples. Thus, a multi-residue method to determine 30 pesticides in honey bee (organochlorine, organophosphorus, and pyrethroids) has been developed and optimized. The method is based on a liquid-liquid extraction followed by a clean-up step on a silica gel/Florisil (R) solid-phase column. Pesticides were determined by gas chromatography with micro-electron capture (mu-ECD) and nitrogen phosphorus detection (NPD). The optimization process was performed using the modified Simplex method, to make this 14 variables were chosen and the optimization was conducted in 21 experiments. The results indicated that the method show recoveries between 78.8 and 114.5% and coefficients of variation below 20%.