Hi:

Jim is correct about volatiles going to wax.  We have several of the
instruments that he referred to plus two thermal desorption systems.  We
draw air out of the hive using a 1/8 inch tube inserted into the hive,
between the frames, and usually into the middle of the cluster -- although
we can sample anywhere.  Digital, battery-powered pumps pull out a small
volume of air over a 6-8 hr period.  Any volatile chemicals are trapped on
sorbent traps (glass or stainless steel tubes packed with specialized gels
(carbon or silicon based).  These tubes are capped, frozen, and sent to the
lab.  In the lab, each tube is placed into the desorption unit.  It heats
them up (basically an oven) and any volatile chemicals are driven off into
the Gas chromatograph/Mass spectrometer.

We have sampled hundreds of colonies at many sites on the east coast, in
Montana, and in New Mexico and Tennesee.  Many of these were sampled
several times during the spring/summer/fall.  Our current data base
contains over 1800 hive samples.  Our hives were in rural, industrial,
urban, and military base locations.

The air inside a hive is a complex soup of all of the volatile organic
compounds from the wood in the box and frames, any plastic, wax, propolis,
metabolic products of the bees themselves, chemicals used to treat the
hives, HMF (if the bees were fed deteriorated syrup), chemicals from floral
resources, resins, pheromones, and all kinds of pollutants (usually at
trace levels - part-per-trillion).  These include gasoline and diesel
related chemicals (the so called BTEX compounds), solvents (like dry
cleaners use) -- common in east coast settings, some unique
military-related chemicals like tear gas break down products and explosives
-- and oh yes, paradichlorobenzene (PDB).

Wax acts just like our sorbent traps - it acts as a sink for many of these
volatile chemicals.  In fact, when a new chemical is introduced into into
the hive, the wax takes it up like a sponge -- there is a lag time before
we start to see it on our traps.  It takes some time for it to reach
equilbrium and then start off-gassing some of the chemical that it has
absorbed or adsorbed.

We have a chapter describing some 200+ volatiles that we have found inside
beehives in a new book that is scheduled to be released early next year.
Other chapters in the book talk about heavy metals (e.g., lead, mercury)
and radiactive materials (e.g., Chernobyl and Croatian bee testing).  I'll
let the list know when and where the book is available.

Finally, Dan says he saw brood above an excluder and doesn't believe the
show of hands in the room.  Again, I will repeat, excluders don't exclude
all queens. The only way to settle this disccusion is to get video
documentation of workers moving eggs.  I will volunteer space on our web
site with full credit to the contributor, if this can be shown.


Cheers

Jerry




Jerry J. Bromenshenk
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http://www.umt.edu/biology/bees