Vetnews | Mei 2025 10 « BACK TO CONTENTS Leading Article cognition of bees, as well as the influence on foraging behaviour and bees as active bioindicators of MP contamination. The review article, on the other hand, addressed the consequences that this contamination by microplastics in bees can cause in the ecosystems. Most papers that dealt explicitly with bees carried out their experiments using only the honeybees Apis mellifera (Linnaeus, 1758) as the test organism, Buteler et al. (2022) and Alma et al. (2023) used the subspecies Apis mellifera carnica (Pollman, 1879), and Deng et al. (2021), who, in addition to A. mellifera, also used the species Apis cerana (Fabricius, 1793) and Xue et al. (2024) used A. cerana. The paper of MacIvor and Moore (2013) uses the species Megachile campanulae (Robertson, 1903) and Megachile rotundata (Fabricius, 1787) as the test organism; and the paper of Viana et al. (2023) uses the species Partamona helleri (Friese, 1900) as the test organism. The paper of MacIvor and Moore (2013) reported the collection of polyurethane and polyethylene plastics for nest building. Alma et al. (2023) reported the incorporation of MP by bees through their food and how these particles are transferred to other sectors within the colonies, such as the honey stocks, wax, and immatures; Viana et al. (2023) reported the incorporation of MP and nanoparticles of a metal oxide via larval ingestion; and Cortés-Corrales et al. (2024) and Schiano et al. (2024) reported the presence of MPs in the bees and pollen. The other nine selected studies addressed honeybee products and microplastics (five primary studies and four review articles), all of which dealt exclusively with honey, not with the contamination in other products such as wax, propolis, and royal jelly. The five primary papers studied the presence of microplastics and the development of new techniques. for identifying this contaminant in honey. The four reviews also analyzed other products ingested by the human population, such as beer, water, fish, and salt, among other products. Regarding the years of publication, although the first three studies were published in 2013, 2015, and 2017, followed by 2019 with two publications, there is a significant increase in studies related to the subject from 2020 with four publications, followed by 2021 with seven, followed by 2022 with six, and 2023 with three publications. In 2024, until the period of this review, there were eight publications (Fig. 3). Among the countries of publication, Italy stands out with six (18.21%), followed by China with five (15.1%), followed by Germany with three (9%), followed by Denmark, Egypt, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, and Poland with two each (6.08% each), followed by seven more countries with one publication each (3.03% each), namely: India, Portugal, Ecuador, Republic of Serbia, Switzerland, Belgium, and Netherlands (Fig. 4).
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTc5MDU=