Abstract:
This study was carried out to evaluate the concentration of selected metals in stingless
bee honey samples collected from three woredas of south Gondar zone of Amhara region.
The concentration of six metal (Cr, Ni, Cu, Zn, Cd and Pd) was determined in stingless
bee honey sample by ICP-OES after digesting the ash obtained from 10 ml of stingless
bee honey sample with 3 ml of HNO3, 1ml of HClO4 and 1ml of H2O2 (3:1:1) mixture. The
results of the analysis were ranged from: Zn (0.942 – 2.208 mg/L), Cr (0.448 –0. 545
mg/L), Cu (0.222 – 0.525 mg/L), Ni (0.325 – 0. 450 mg/L), Pb (0.0160 – 0.0245 mg/L)
and Cd (0.0012 – 0.0034 mg/L). Among the studied metals, while Zn was found to be of
the highest concentration in all the studied stingless bee honey samples and the
concentration of all metals are an acceptable level of jointly proposed maximum
permissible limit by the WHO and FAO. The accuracy of the procedure was evaluated by
analyzing spiked samples and the recoveries of the metals were found to be in the range of
(74.7-114.5%). The values obtained in this study are comparable with the corresponding
value of different countries available in the literature. A statistical analysis of variance
(ANOVA) using excel and SPSS software was used to calculate and compare the mean
concentration of metals. One-way ANOVA revealed that there was significant difference
(p < 0.05) in the levels of all studied metals except Cr and Pb across the sites