Abstract. This review summarizes our progress and effort in the study during last seven years of one of the very important class of insecticides - neonicotinoids, which are considered as the most effective ones. Advanced active substrates of Au and Ag nanoparticles were produced by pulsed-laser deposition and thermal deposition on different basic substrates as Si wafers, quartz, paper, aluminum ceramic or diamond abrasive films in view of surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) detection of the studied neonicotinoids. The SERS peaks intensity rose by at least one order of magnitude after the pulsed-laser annealing of the nobble metal films or nanoparticles ar-rays formation. In all cases, the neonicotinoid insecticides in amounts much smaller than those ordinarily applied in agricultural medicine were studied. The enhancement factor (EF) was estimated to be about ≈ 10⁵ (thiamethoxam) as the limit of detection (LOD) reached tenths of ≈ nM (thiamethoxam and imidacloprid). The importance of SERS as a relatively inexpensive and simple method is emphasized in monitoring, controlling and regulating the level of such substances as environmental pollutants, thus precluding harming the honey bees' health and thus the human health.

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