QuEChERS methodology combined with high performance liquid chromatography-UV/DAD for the determination of common pesticides in honey

Over the past few decades, honey products have been found to contain residues of a variety of contaminants. Among them pesticides residues resulting from treatments applied either inside beehives or in the agricultural environment have become an issue of great awareness. In this work, a modified QuEChERS (quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged and safe) extraction method is proposed for the simultaneous quantification of amitraz, bromopropylate, coumaphos and tau-fluvalinate, which are the most frequently used insecticides to control varroatosis and ascospherosis in hives. Analyses were performed by high performance liquid chromatography on a C18 reversed-phase column with UV/diode array detection (HPLC-UV/DAD). An isocratic elution system was used with acetonitrile-water (80:20 v/v) containing 0,01 M acetic acid as the mobile phase while the selected compounds, amitraz, bromopropylate, coumaphos and τ-fluvalinate were detected at 249, 233, 313 and 254 nm, respectively. Overall recovery rates from honey samples ranged from 78% (bromopropylate) to 103% (amitraz), with correlation coefficients >0,99 in all cases. The proposed methodology was successfully applied to the analysis of 19 commercial honey samples.