Quantitative analysis of honey bee blood-ethanol levels following exposure to ethanol vapors

The use of invertebrate models has allowed researchers to examine the
mechanisms behind alcoholism and its effects with a cost-effective system.
In that respect, the honey bee is an ideal model species to study the
effects of ethanol (EtOH) due to the behavioural and physiological
similarities of honey bees with humans when alcohol is consumed. Although
both ingestion and inhalation methods are used to dose subjects in insect
EtOH model systems, there is little literature on the use of the EtOH
vapor-exposure method for experiments using honey bees. The experiment
presented here provides baseline data for a dose EtOH-haemolymph response
curve when using EtOH vapor-inhalation dosing with honey bees (Apis
mellifera). Bees were exposed to EtOH vapors for 0, 1, 2.5, or 5 min, and
haemolymph was collected 1 min post EtOH exposure. Haemolymph samples were
analyzed using gas chromatography (GC) for haemolymph EtOH concentration.
The ethanol-haemolymph level of the bees increased linearly with ethanol
exposure time. The results provide a dosing guide for haemolymph EtOH
level in the honey bee model ethanol-inhalation system, and thus makes the
honey bee model more robust.