European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization
PP 1/170 (4)
Organisation Europe
´enne et Me
´diterrane
´enne pour la Protection des Plantes
Efficacy
evaluation
of
plant
protection
products
Evaluation biologique des produits phytosanitaires
Side-effects on honeybees
Specific scope
This standard describes the conduct of trials for the evaluation of
side-effects of plant protection products on honeybees.
Specific approval and amendment
First approved in 1991-09.
Aligned with revised standard text in 1998.
Revision (updated with ICPBR-recommendations) approved in
2000-09 and 2010-09.
Introduction
It is important that plant protection products should be authorized
for use only in ways which do not pose an unacceptable risk of
harm to honeybees
(
Apis
mellifera
). For this purpose, it may be
necessary to provide evidence during the registration process to
enable the safety of the product in question to be evaluated. This
standard presents several different types of test (laboratory tests,
semi-field cage tests and field trials) which can be used to provide
such evidence.
The description of these methods is based upon the ‘Recom-
mendations for harmonization of methods for testing hazards of
pesticides to honeybees’, decided by the International Commis-
sion for Plant–Bee Relationships (ICPBR) at the Symposia on
the harmonization of methods for testing the toxicity of pesticides
to bees held in Wageningen, NL (1980), Hohenheim, DE (1982),
Harpenden, GB (1985), Rez, CZ (1990), Wageningen, NL
(1993), Braunschweig, DE (1996), Avignon, FR (1999), Bologna
IT (2002), York, GB (2005) and Bucharest, RO (2008).
The laboratory tests examine oral toxicity and contact toxicity
of the plant protection product. The semi-field cage test and the
field trial study the effects of application of the product during
bee flight. As well as providing a worst-case assessment under
realistic conditions of exposure, the cage test can be designed to
study certain hazards to honeybees which are not possible to
study by field trials, such as the effects on bees foraging the
honeydew from aphids. Laboratory tests are conducted with
single bees or groups of bees, while semi-field and field tests are
conducted with bee colonies on a crop.
While recognizing that no single test method can provide suffi-
cient information to classify the side-effects of plant protection
products on honeybees, it is also important to stress that all these
tests are not required. Because field testing is time-consuming
and costly, the laboratory tests or semi-field test may serve to
classify many products as definitely harmless or harmful without
having recourse to field trials. The decisions on which tests to
perform and on whether to proceed from one test to another will
depend on the characteristics of the plant protection product, its
use pattern, and the tests already performed. These decisions can
be derived from a logically constructed sequential decision-mak-
ing scheme (Oomen, 1986). A joint EPPO
⁄
Council of Europe
Panel on Environmental Risk Assessment of Plant Protection
Products has developed such schemes, including one for honey-
bees
(OEPP
⁄
EPPO,
1993,
2003,
2010).
This
guideline
is
designed to provide sufficient information to allow the appropri-
ate tests to be conducted and evaluated, but also to be sufficiently
flexible to accommodate the specific needs of individual tests
(Alix & Lewis, 2010).
Laboratory tests
1. Experimental conditions
1.1 Principle of the trial
Oral and contact toxicity of test compounds to adult worker
honeybees are assessed in the laboratory. Bees are exposed to
different doses of the compound by way of feeding or topical
application. Mortality values are used to provide a regression line
and LD
50
.
1.2 Trial conditions
Bees are kept in holding cages that are well ventilated and easily
cleaned. Plastic cages should not be used unless they are disposed
of after use, because of possible contamination. Re-use
of
ª
2010 OEPP/EPPO,
Bulletin OEPP/EPPO Bulletin
40
, 313–319
313