The first-ever smartphone app about keeping healthy honeybees has been launched by Vita (Europe) Ltd, the world’s largest dedicated bee health company. The app is free and gives beekeepers easy mobile access to information and photographs about honeybee disease identification and treatment.
The app, suitable for nearly all smartphones and tablet devices, can be downloaded free from www.healthybeeguide.com. It runs on Apple or Android, on iPhones, iPads, Samsungs and Blackberrys and the full range of smart mobiles.
Seb Owen, Commercial Development Manager at Vita who has led the development of the app, said: “Beekeepers often need information at a moment’s notice in their apiaries, so we devised this app to be used anywhere they can receive a mobile signal.
“We introduced this first-ever honeybee health smartphone app to a small number of beekeepers earlier this spring and the first reactions have been very positive indeed, so we are now ready to go fully live
“The Disease Identification section with its photographs and descriptions is already proving very useful in alerting beekeepers to potential problems – and with their smartphone they will even be able to take photographs to compare later or send to fellow beekeepers.”
The main sections of the app cover disease identification and treatment, where to buy treatments, plus sections on the very popular Vita Photo gallery, a beekeeping calendar and links to Vita’s website. Facebook, Twitter and Google+ pages.
To access the free Vita web app from your smartphone, simply use your internet browser to go to www.healthybeeguide.com. The app requires an internet connection, is not available from app stores and will not store information on your phone.