Abstract
Abstract Maize can be a valuable source of pollen when plants attractive for bees are not available. Honeybees can forage from conventional maize as well as from genetically modified (GM ) maize. The Court of Justice of the European Union (EU ) ruled that pollen in honey must be treated as a food ingredient and therefore falls within the scope of Regulation 1829/2003/EC on GM food and feed and requires authorization. GM pollen unauthorized in the EU cannot be present in honey at any level, and honey must be labelled if it contains more than 0.9% of pollen from authorized GM plants in relation to total pollen content. However, currently available analytical methods allow only for estimation of GM pollen quantity in honey. Therefore, Directive 2001/110/EC related to honey needs to be amended so that pollen can be regarded as a natural constituent of honey. Because the EU is a big honey importer, validated and harmonized detection methods are necessary for the control of GM pollen in honey.
Highlights
The honeybee is inextricably linked with entomophilous spermatophyte plants, which are the main source of the energy and protein for honeybees that are necessary for rearing the generations of bees
Since implementation of the European Union (EU) Regulation 1829/2003/European Commission (EC) on genetically modified (GM) food and feed, pollen in honey has been classified as a natural component, and honey containing GM pollen has not required labelling
This situation changed because the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) judged that pollen is a honey ingredient and that honey containing GM pollen can be placed on the market only if GM pollen has been authorized as food and proper labelling is in place (Court of Justice, 2011)
Summary
The honeybee is inextricably linked with entomophilous spermatophyte plants, which are the main source of the energy (nectar) and protein (pollen) for honeybees that are necessary for rearing the generations of bees. Worker honeybees frequently visit the flowers of anemophilous plants and gather only pollen (Prabucki, 1998). The attractiveness of these plants depends primarily on their pollen efficiency, which is usually higher than that of entomophilous taxa. Since implementation of the European Union (EU) Regulation 1829/2003/EC on genetically modified (GM) food and feed, pollen in honey has been classified as a natural component, and honey containing GM pollen has not required labelling. Many GM plants (maize, cotton, soybean, sugar beet, rapeseed) are cultivated
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