Awards from Apimondia

We are delighted to announce that IBRA received a Gold and Bronze medal at the Apimondia Congress that recently took place in Buenos Aires.

In the book competition one of our latest publication Varroa - still a problem in the 21^st century? won a Gold medal. This book was published as a result of a conference that took place earlier in the year. The award recognises that IBRA has managed to collate some of the most recent research in this field and offers a comprehensive analysis and possible solutions to the varroa problem. If you would like to purchase a copy, click here for the IBRA bookshop.

Bee World was awarded the Bronze medal for obtaining third place in the international bee journal competition. This is a wonderful result showing that the quality of our journal is certainly world class and able to compete with journals that have more staff and resources than we do at IBRA. If you are not a member and interested in receiving Bee World click here for more information.  

Norman Carreck, IBRA Scientific Director  receiving  the awards at Apimondia

Gormanston 2011

Thank you to the Federation of Irish Beekeepers Association for organising another excellent week at Gormanston. Once again the IBRA stand was well supported and it was a great opportunity to meet those attending the lectures and workshops.

As always we are grateful to our members who took the time to say 'hello' and we extend a warm welcome to all those who became new members of IBRA during the week.

IBRA AGM 2011

We are grateful to Steve Benbow for taking the time to talk to IBRA members, trustees and staff at their AGM on Saturday 16th July. His inspiring talk and collection of fascinating photographs (not just of London roof tops!) meant that Steve had everyone's attention for the whole presentation. 

We also acknowledge the hospitality of Slough, Windsor and Maidenhead beekeepers Society who provided some of the refreshments and the venue.   

Pictured from left to right: Sarah Jones, Norman Carreck, Steve Benbow and Hans Kjaersgaard.

Announcing the 2010 winner of the
Eva Crane Memorial Award.

 The international panel of editors of the Journal of Apicultural Research (JAR) are delighted to announce that the winner of this years award goes to Simon Potts and his fellow contributors for their excellent paper:

          Declines in managed honey bees and beekeepers in Europe.

This paper has now been made freely available in JAR.
For further information about the award and previous winners please click here.

Bees Under Bombardment

A new report published this week by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), has brought together and analysed the latest science on collapsing bee colonies.

The study, entitled Global Bee Colony Disorders and other Threats to Insect Pollinators, underlines that multiple factors are at work linked with the way humans are rapidly changing the conditions and the ground rules that support life on Earth. It shows humans' large dependency on ecosystem services even for such vital sectors as food production.

IBRA Trustee Dr Peter Neumann said: "The transformation of the countryside and rural areas in the past half century or so has triggered a decline in wild-living bees and other pollinators. Society is increasingly investing in ‘industrial-scale' hives and managed colonies to make up the shortfall and going so far as to truck bees around to farms and fields in order to maintain our food supplies". Read more....

See IBRA Press Release in response to the Report

Varroa - Still a Problem in the 21st Century

After weeks of preparation it was great to see so many had taken the time to attend our one day conference at the University of Worcester. We hope that everyone enjoyed the day as much as we did. We are grateful to the speakers for their excellent presentations and for being able to impart so much information. For more details click here for the conference page. A full report will be available to IBRA members in the next issue of Bee World.

Also see a report in the latest issue of Moderni Vcelara

If you were unable to attend, we will be publishing the papers. These should be on sale by the end of April, so watch the web site for updates!  

Meet the new Chairman of IBRA!

On 3rd July IBRA held its Annual General Meeting. Andy Poulter stepped down as Chairman and his place has been taken by Hans Kjaersgaard. Hans has introduced himself by writing a Guest Editorial in the latest issue of Bee World, Vol. 87 (3) and a short biography can also be found on our page for IBRA Council Members (this page is being developed).

NEW IBRA STRUCTURE 

The Membership and Subscription structure of IBRA has changed. A membership of IBRA will now be offered at a reduced rate and will include 4 issues of "Buzz Extra", along with other benefits.

Journal of Apicultural Research will not be included in this membership, but will be available as a subscription only. Please note that this journal will become electronic and available online only. Hard copies can be provided, but at an additional cost.

Journal of ApiProduct and ApiMedical Science, our new electronic journal published in 2009, will be available as a subscription also.

Please click here for full details of the above.    

New Eva Crane Publication

Although Dr Crane left this world in September 2007 one of her studies, never before published, has just seen the light of day via the Internet. Terms in Indo-European languages for some concepts related to honey, bees and hives

The article appears on Dublin University's School of Celtic Studies web site:

www.celt.dias.ie/publications/online/beearticle

In the paper there is much interesting information and two useful tables showing the similarities, and dissimilarities, of words for a number of bee products. Such words also give an insight into the ways in which communities regarded these products in early times. A useful adjunct to this work is the table on words covering honey and honeydew that appeared in Honey by another name (Jones, R. Buzz Extra Vol 5, No.3 September 2008)

Eva Crane
(image courtesy Bucks Free Press, 1990)