Vita Photo Competition Winners 2014

Boštjan Tovornik’s winning entry for the 2014 Vita Photo Competition

With entries coming from all over the world, the overall winner of the 2014 Vita photo Competition is Boštjan Tovornik of Slovenia for his picture of a line of honeybees feeding on the face of a comb.

The winning entries will appear in the Vita 2015 Calendar and be added to the Vita online Photo Gallery for beekeepers and others to use to promote honeybees and beekeeping.

The Vita 2015 Calendar line-up is:

January          Lester Quayle
February        Steve Minshall
March             Hamish Symington
April                Susan Kimber
May                 Clemency Shadbolt
June               Edna Jurcan
July                 Leka Huie
August           Leka Huie
September   Partha Pratim Saha
October         Boštjan Tovornik
November    Vic Shepheard
December    Daniel Rollitt

Honourable Mentions and with photos also featured in the calendar are:

David Harris Nelson
James Owen Murphy in the under-16’s category.

Sebastian Owen, Commercial Director at Vita (Europe) Ltd, said: “The Vita Photo competition is going global. This year we had entries not just from Europe and the USA, but from India, Bangladesh and Korea. We warmly thank everyone who entered and who gave the judges such a difficult choice in selecting an overall winner. We are delighted to be able to add more than 100 new images to the online Vita Photo Gallery resource for beekeepers.”

Vita 2015 Calendar Cover

The 2015 Vita Calendar will be sent to Vita distributors across the globe, but a medium resolution pdf file of the calendar can be downloaded at no cost by registered users of the Vita Photo Gallery. Registration is free and it can be accessed at www.vita-europe.com/beehealth/gallery/

More than 200 new images will soon be added to the Vita Photo Gallery thanks to the competition entrants. That will take the number of images in the searchable and free-to-use Gallery to well over 500. This resource is very popular with beekeepers seeking images to use in talks and presentations and with new beekeepers keen to see photographs of a very wide range of beekeeping activities and honeybee activity.

Vita warmly thanks all the entrants and the international judging panel: Nicola Bradbear (Bees for Development), Clare Waring (Bee Craft, UK), Gabe Dadant (Dadant,USA),  Bengt Svensson (Vaxfabrik, Sweden) plus Giles Blomfield, Jeremy Owen and Max Watkins on behalf of Vita (Europe) in the UK,  and Svetlana Pantyukhina of Vita CIS, and Maurizio Borhy of Vita-Italia.

The 2015 Vita Calendar will be sent to Vita distributors across the globe, but a medium resolution pdf file of the calendar can be downloaded for free by registered users of the Vita Photo Gallery. Registration is free and it can be accessed at www.vita-europe.com/beehealth/gallery/

Below are some of the winning entries.

May – Clemency Shadbolt

March – Hamish Symington

July – Leka Huie

January – Lester Quayle

Notes To Editors

Vita (Europe) Limited is a mite control and honeybee health specialist. It is the world’s largest dedicated supplier of honeybee health products to the honey and pollination industries. With a rigorous and ethical approach to research and development into honeybee health, Vita has no commercial interests in crop pesticides or crop breeding that may be harmful to honeybees.

Vita researches, develops, and manufactures a range of honeybee health products. Its headquarters are in the UK, it has offices in Italy, France and Russia, and partners across the globe. These products are marketed internationally through a network of 60 distributors in 50 countries.

Vita’s honeybee health product range includes anti-varroa acaricides – Apistan® (outside the USA/Canada) and Apiguard® – chalkbrood and wax moth controls, foulbrood diagnostic kits and health-promoting feeds. Vita also supplies Asian hornet traps, Small Hive Beetle traps and swarm lures. Vita products have been registered by more than 60 veterinary authorities.

Vita promotes sustainable beekeeping through Integrated Pest Management (IPM). Its treatments are designed to inhibit the build-up of resistance and wherever possible contain natural compounds and biological controls that are benign to all but the target pests.

Vita invests a very high proportion of its turnover in research and development. Research partners include universities such as Cardiff, Milan, Udine and Naples and institutes such as the Tierhygienisches Institut (Institute of Animal Health) in Freiburg, Germany, the UK Central Science Laboratory and the USDA in America. Vita’s innovative research and development work has been recognised by and has received support from the UK Government.

As a result of its primary research of natural control agents, Vita is currently engaged in new projects exploring mite control in the agriculture, veterinary, and horticulture industries as well as public health and human allergen control.

See www.vita-europe.com for more information and a web app which can be accessed at www.healthybeeguide.com.

Follow Vita as “Vita (Europe) Ltd” on Facebook and Google+ and as “@vitaeuropeltd ” on Twitter.

Media Enquiries

Stephen Fleming at Palam Communications
+44 (0) 1635 299116