Determination of Antimicrobial Residues in Honey by Liquid Chromatography Tandem Mass Spectrometry Ádám Tölgyesi 1 & Enikő Barta 2 & Mary Sohn 3 & Virender K. Sharma 4 Received: 16 August 2017 /Accepted: 14 January 2018 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018 Abstract Antibiotics are generally used worldwide against bacterial diseases in the treatment of food-producing animals. Since the residues of active agents or their metabolites can appear in these foods, the European Union, for instance, has set maximum residue limit concentrations for authorised veterinary drugs in foodstuffs. However, as yet, regulatory limits have not been established for honey and thus far, only recommendations exist. The aim of this study is to present a multiscreening method for residues in honey for the determination of 36 antimicrobial residues associated with several antibiotics of the B1 group (sulfonamides, trimethoprim, aminoglycosides, tetracyclines, quinolones and lincomycin) as well as the antibiotic griseofulvin. During the screening analysis, samples are hydrolysed in an acidified medium, purified on polymeric solid-phase extraction cartridges and subsequently analysed by reversed phase ion pair liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry. The liquid chromatographic separation was optimised by computer sim- ulation with DryLab software. The positive identification of target compounds in suspicious samples was confirmed using earlier developed antibiotic class specific methods of which the aminoglycoside method is herein described in detail. The developed approaches were then applied to samples in the national monitoring program after their suc- cessful validation. Moreover, the screening and confirmatory methods were applied to proficiency test samples resulting in satisfactory identification and quantification. However, the analysis of real samples revealed that co- eluting target compounds can have considerable influence on the accuracy of this semi-quantitative multiscreening method. Keywords Antimicrobial residues . Honey . Liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry . Screening . Confirmation . Proficiency test Introduction Hungarian honey is well known for its unique taste and qual- ity. Approximately 20,000–25,000 t of honey is annually pro- duced in Hungary of which two thirds is exported. Furthermore, 10 % of the honey production of the European Union (EU) originates in Hungary (Agriculture and Rural Development 2015). Consequently, this product of Hungary is of worldwide importance. In Hungary, the National Food Chain Safety Office (NFCSO) investigates the honey samples in a monitoring system for a set of parameters (e.g. diastase activity, sugar content, composition, contaminants) in order to maintain the quality of honey and to protect consumers against potentially toxic contaminants. As a consequence of the administration of antibiotics to food-producing animals, residues of veterinary drugs can ap- pear in these foods. Therefore, the EU has set maximum res- idue limit (MRL) concentrations for antibiotics in food Presented at the 22nd European Union Reference Laboratory/National Reference Laboratories workshop for the control of antimicrobial resi- dues in food of animal origin, Fougeres, France, June 21–22, 2017. * Ádám Tölgyesi tolgyesi83@gmail.com 1 National Food Chain Safety Office, Food and Feed Safety Directorate, Food Toxicological National Reference Laboratory, Mester utca 81, Budapest 1095, Hungary 2 Department of Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Szt. Gellért tér 4, Budapest 1111, Hungary 3 Department of Chemistry, Florida Institute of Technology, 150 West University Boulevard, Melbourne, FL 32901, USA 4 Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, School of Public Health, Texas A&M University, 1266 TAMU, College Station, TX 77843, USA Food Analytical Methods https://doi.org/10.1007/s12161-018-1166-5