News
Chart your honeybee season with Vita’s free infographic
A completed My Beekeeping Year
A customisable infographic for beekeepers to record their honeybee season is now available for download from the website of Vita (Europe) Ltd, the honeybee health specialist.
My Beekeeping Year is a fun, A4-sized seasonal chart for beekeepers to note down memorable events during their beekeeping year. Anyone can register for free to download it here: www.vita-europe.com/beehealth/gallery. (Existing users of the Vita Photo Gallery need not re-register.)
“As we travel around beekeeping countries, we frequently hear beekeepers speak of the strangest season or the biggest or the smallest harvest they’ve ever experienced. But seasons merge into one another and it’s difficult to keep track of what happened when”, said Sebastian Owen, Commercial Development Manager of Vita. “So we are providing a simple, fun way for beekeepers to record each year and look back over the past to recall each season.”
Vita website goes multi-lingual
Buzz … жужжание … Zumbido … Bourdonnent … and even Ronzio!
Vita website goes multi-lingual in four of the top ten internet languages
To meet the growing global demand for information about products to tackle honeybee diseases, the website of Vita (Europe) Ltd is now available in four of the top ten languages used on the internet: English, Russian, Spanish, and French. A separate website in Italian is also available.
Honeybee health initiatives award launched by Vita
Beekeeping associations across the world are invited to enter a new Vita award for honeybee health initiatives.
Anyone can nominate a group. The entry form is short and straight-forward.
The Vita Bee Initiative Awards will highlight the vital work of voluntary beekeeping groups to combat the ongoing health threats to honeybees and publicise good practice for the benefit of other beekeepers.
Winners of the Award will receive trophies and equipment such as microscopes to a value of €250 to help them in maintaining healthy honeybee colonies. Entrants will also receive a limited edition booklet highlighting the best projects. Many projects will also be publicised online for the benefit of beekeeping communities across the world.
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.
Beetle Blaster to combat new threat to European honeybees
Low-cost, green Small Hive Beetle trap now available for European beekeepers
Beetle Blaster
Beekeepers across Europe now face the threat of a new pest, the Small Hive Beetle (SHB), but a tool to combat the pest is already available from Vita (Europe) Ltd.
The Beetle Blaster is a low cost, simple and very environmentally friendly device that can alert beekeepers to the presence of SHB and help to control its numbers. A plastic trough filled with food grade oil is inserted in the hive and SHBs present will be attracted to it as a hiding place and trapped. The beekeeper can then dispose of the trapped beetles. Since the beetles tend to first attack the periphery of a colony, the 23 cm long traps are designed to hang between outer frames in the brood box and thereby have minimal impact upon normal honeybee activity.