Abstract
The present study aimed to detect pesticide residues in the honey produced by the stingless bee Melipona subnitida. A total of thirty-five samples of honey from M. subnitida were collected from twelve municipalities of the semiarid region of Rio Grande do Norte state, northeastern Brazil. Of these thirty-five samples, fourteen were from colonies raised in an urban area, while the other twenty-one were from the countryside. The pesticides in the samples were extracted using a modified QuEChERS method. The simultaneous analysis of 116 analytes in the honey samples was performed using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). Twenty-five samples (71.4% of samples) were contaminated by some amount of pesticide, and of them twenty-four had just one pesticide and one had three. The detected compounds included organophosphate pesticides (OPP) monocrotophos (24 samples), trichlorfon (6 samples) and chlorpyrifos-methyl (2 samples). In conclusion, the honey produced by the stingless bee M. subnitida may be contaminated by pesticides, which emphasizes the need for food monitoring before commercialization.