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This guideline describes a procedure through which pollen - in particular pollen of genetically modified organisms - may be sampled by means of bee colonies. Active foraging bees gather the pollen, carry it into the bee colony and store it there in pollen cells (bee-bread). Furthermore, foragers gather nectar and honeydew. The latter goods contain pollen which fell from the anthers of the blossom into the nectar drop or pollen, which was dispersed by the wind and sticks in the nectar of other blossoms or adheres to the sticky honeydew of plants. Nectar and honeydew are converted to honey and stored by the bees in the beehive.

Honey and bee-bread may be used as samples for the subsequent analysis of pollen as it is possible to concentrate sufficient amounts of pollen for a molecular biological diagnostic.

Guidelines VDI 4330 Part 1 and VDI 4330 Part 2 present the necessary fundamentals for the understanding of this guideline. The sampling of pollen in honey and bee-bread shall be viewed in conjunction with the technical sampling for the GMO-monitoring (VDI 4330 Part 3).

The use of the biological, active foraging honeybee and the technical passive samplers complement each other in a multifaceted and positive way for pollen monitoring of GMO. Whereas the technical samplers provide results to pollen yields at the site, bees display a spatially overlapping sampling activity, which represents a cross section of the established, blossoming plants in the area. A wide spectrum of pollen species is recorded using both sampling methods with the procedures complementing each other across the vegetation period [1].