Developing an acute oral and contact toxicity test with the bumble bee
Bumble bees like Bombus terrestris are important pollinators in off-crop ecosystems and gain importance in crop pollination. Especially in green house agriculture, bumble bees are essential for pollination activities. The ecology of bumble bees is different from the ecology of honey bees and therefore, the route of exposure is different also.
Furthermore, bumble bees are regarded as potentially more vulnerable than honey bees (EFSA, 2013). Due to the combination of higher sensitivity and different ecology it is not possible in risk assessment to read across from honey bees to bumble bees (Thompson and Hunt, 1999 and Thompson, 2001). Therefore the increased testing of non-apis bees as bumble bees is proposed by the recent EFSA draft honeybee guidance document.
Even though bumble bee testing has already been conducted for several years, there is no agreed protocol yet. The terrestrial ecotoxicology lab department of Eurofins Agroscience Services is participating in the non-apis ring test group of the ICPPR. The aim of the ring test is the development of a Tier I acute oral and contact toxicity test with the bumble bee Bombus terrestris L.
The conduct of the studies is based on the OECD 213 and 214 guidelines on the acute toxicity test with honey bees. However, there will be some differences compared to honey bee testing. Due to no trophallaxis in bumble bees, the oral application has to be performed in individual cages. Also for acute contact testing the single housing has been established.
To avoid excessive variability in size, the test organisms have to be sorted by body weight. Our terrestrial ecotoxicology lab has conducted oral and contact GLP tests with bumble bees since 2013 comparable to the ring test protocol.
First results of the ICPPR ring test group will be presented by a poster on the SETAC Europe 2015 in Barcelona (http://barcelona.setac.eu/?contentid=767).
Please contact Dr Susanne Timmermann with any enquiries
