Honeybees are experiencing high mortality in the United States and worldwide. Neonicotinoids, a class of commonly used insecticides, have been found in honey samples suggesting that bees and other pollinators are being exposed to these neurotoxic chemicals. Pesticide exposure has been identified as one of the stressors causing increased mortality and as a possible cause of colony collapse disorder in bees.
Here we show that a robotic sampler can be used to automate the extraction and determination of neonicotinoid compounds from honey samples. Automating the entire workflow from liquid-liquid extraction to LC-MS/MS analysis results in high throughput. The GERSTEL MPS roboticPRO sampler performs syringe transfer of all liquids involved in the liquid-liquid extraction as well as controlled mixing and centrifugation of the sample extracts. The resulting extracts are introduced into an Agilent Ultivo LC-MS/MS instrument for detection and quantification.