Dear All,

What a lot of fuss over one remark! I've just returned from vacation and
read the backlog on the
"terribly-expensive-and-will-never-be-used-by-beekeepers-anyway Vita AFB
Field Diagnostic Kit".

Let me just say that Vita have no intention of forcing anyone to use this
kit, to twist your arm, extract teeth or anything else. I have been looking
at diagnostic kits for AFB and for EFB for some years and through
collaboration with the National Bee Unit here in the UK we have come up with
a reliable, simple method of detection. The kit is meant to HELP beekeepers
confirm AFB (or EFB) in their colonies. Nothing else. If you don't want to
use the kit, don't buy it. But it's not even on the market yet so you can't,
even if you do! It will be launched at Apimondia in August. They are so new
they aren't even on our website yet.

The kit has taken several years to develop and is based on sound, patented
technology; the kit itself resembles a small pregnancy test kit. For those
beekeepers who have never been pregnant or been in the vicinity of a
potentially pregnant person in the past 30 years or so, this is a
rectangular piece of plastic with a "window" cut in the middle of it,
through which you can see an absorbent strip. As a liquid is introduced into
a small "well" at one end of the device it flows along the strip. In
pregnancy kits there is a point in the strip that reacts to substances in
the liquid sample and shows up as a coloured line, if the user is pregnant,
or not, if she isn't. These kits are pretty fail-safe these days.

Our AFB kit works by recognition of monoclonal antibodies specific to
American Foulbrood which are impregnated onto the central absorbent strip.
There are no toxic chemicals or any such like involved. If a sample of AFB
infected material is macerated by shaking in a sample bottle and introduced
into the well of one of our kits, the liquid will flow down the strip until
it gets to a certain point where a blue Control line will automatically
appear (to prove that the test is physically working). Where AFB is present
in the sample a second blue Test line will also appear. Where there is no
AFB, no second line will show up.

These kits have been through stringent validation in a number of countries
and especially so by the National Bee Unit in the UK so that the efficacy
can be given as 98%+.
The Bee Inspectors here are confident in the methodology and will be relying
heavily on these kits for diagnoses in the field. The kit obviates the need
for laboratory analysis.

I suspect that the erroneous kit that Peter saw must have been one of the
first old prototypes which do show the second line but it was sometimes very
faint. Clarity of the line has improved in newer prototypes. This has been
enhanced in the final kits and we have had no false negatives nor false
positives.

The Vita EFB Field Diagnostic Kit has been finalised this month and like the
AFB kit will be launched at Apimondia, Slovenia in August.

Many beekeepers will have absolutely no wish to even look at these
diagnostic tools; we have developed them as an aid to those beekeepers,
inspectors, researchers etc who may wish to have confirmation perhaps of
their own initial diagnosis and for those who aren't so experienced to be
able to detect and learn about these important diseases also.

This is not what you might call a "mass market", but we believe in trying to
keep bees alive, wherever they are. The initial response to these diagnostic
kits in Europe has been very positive as have the results from the limited
testing in other parts of the world so far.

The kits are manufactured to a high specification at a specialist laboratory
called Pocket Diagnostics based within the UK government Central Science
Laboratory at York. These instruments may not be as cheap as a matchstick
test for AFB but we are talking about a different thing altogether.

(I am accordingly in negotiation for the price of matches to increase
dramatically).


Max

Dr Max Watkins
Vita (Europe) Limited
21/23 Wote Street
Basingstoke
Hampshire RG21 7NE
UK

Tel.: +44 (0) 1256 473177
Fax: +44 (0) 1256 473179

e-mail: [log in to unmask]

web: http://www.vita-europe.com

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