Vita bee health initiatives award 2017

Groups of beekeepers are invited to apply for Vita’s 2017 award for honey bee health initiatives. The Vita Bee Health Initiatives Award highlights the vital work of voluntary beekeeping groups to combat the ongoing health threats to honeybees. Vita will help publicise their work for the benefit of other beekeepers.

Anyone can nominate a group. The entry form is short and straight-forward, the closing date is 31 July 2017 and results will be announced at Apimondia in September 2017.

The overall winner of the inaugural competition in 2015 was the Devon Apicultural Research Group in the UK. The group is researching the apparently increasing number of drone-laying queens. The project is ongoing and the drones are being examined with the help of a high quality microscope provided by Vita.

Sebastian Owen of Vita (Europe) Ltd said: “The inaugural competition brought to light many fascinating projects across the world. We never cease to be amazed by the work that so many groups do voluntarily. The excellent submissions included a lecture and mentoring series in Canada, a children’s project in the USA and a bee breeding programme on the Isle of Man. We welcome all sorts of projects.”

Award Entry Details

The closing date is 31 July 2017.

Vita will announce the winners at Apimondia 2017 in Istanbul in September.

Entries should be submitted by email to . Photographs, video, audio recordings and other supporting material may also be submitted through attachments or weblinks. (See below for details.)

Entries should contain the following information:

Contact Details
Name
Organisation if appropriate
Address
Telephone
Email

Initiative Title (max 20 words)

Summary (max 150 words)

Initiative Outline — including aims, who is involved, timescales, results (max 1000 words)

Additional materials — web links are preferred, but emailed attachments are acceptable if they do not exceed 5 MB in total.

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, a Bee Gym varroa grooming aid 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 Thessaloniki, Cardiff, Milan, Udine and Naples and institutes such as the FERA Laboratories in the UK 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