Noticias
Results of 2015 Vita Photo Competition
Hamish Symington
Vita’s 2015 international photo competition attracted the largest numbers of entries yet with submissions from people on five continents.
The overall winner is Hamish Symington with his image of two bees, each with its proboscis extended, drinking nectar from comb.
Fourteen entries will appear in the limited edition 2016 Vita Calendar distributed to Vita’s global network and the winners. Some of the photos are below and a pdf file of the full calendar is available for free download to users of the Vita Gallery www.vita-europe.com/beehealth/gallery.
2015 Vita Bee Health Initiative Award Winners
The Pinnacle Winner of the first Vita Honeybee Health Initiative Award is a research project run by the UK Devon Apicultural Research Group potentially involving hundreds of beekeepers as well as professional scientists investigating honeybee queen fertility.
Seven Distinction Winners have also been announced with a wide range of projects including group bee disease identification, a children’s project and a bee wellness programme.
Vita (Europe) Ltd and Apilab in South America start working together for healthier bees
At Apimondia 2015 in Daejeon, South Korea, two companies based in different hemispheres and with the common aim of promoting honeybee health have announced that they are joining forces to offer beekeepers a wider range of bee health treatments, feeds and products.
Vita (Europe) Ltd, the world’s largest dedicated honeybee health company, is teaming up with Apilab, veterinary beekeeping product manufacturer active across South and Central America. Through joint marketing each company’s products can be made more widely available and there are possibilities for joint research and development activities.
2015 Vita international honeybee and beekeeping photo competition
The fourth annual Vita photo competition is now open for entries to anyone with an interest in beekeeping or honeybees.
Winners’ photographs will appear in the 2016 Vita (Europe) Ltd Calendar and they will each receive a copy of the limited edition calendar. There will also be a cash prize plus beekeeping products for the best as judged by an international panel of beekeeping journalists and suppliers.
All suitable entries will also be added to the Vita Gallery, a free online resource of more than 600 honeybee-related photos which is used by beekeeping lecturers and associations across the globe.
HopGuard approval process
At Vita’s offices yesterday, Max, Alexandra and Zahir met to discuss the next stages in the process to achieve pan-European approval for HopGuard, a varroa control treatment.
One of the next steps is residue assessment: when applied how much, if any, Hopguard will find its way into wax and honey.
To be able to assess residues accurately, a benchmarking test must be performed by independent laboratory. they take samples of wax and honey and impregnate them separately with known amounts of Hopguard.
The laboratory then measures the amount of Hopguard that can be detected in the samples. This measurement then provides the benchmark for subsequent field tests.
Here, Max is pictured taking some comb with honey (from a bell jar) to send to the testing laboratory.
This is just one of the many tests that a regulated treatment such as Hopguard must undergo.
The process is quite expensive, but when approvals are granted it does give beekeepers the assurance that they are dealing with a thoroughly tested and safe treatment.