5th International Meeting of Young Beekeepers
5th – 8th June 2014 Pszczela Wola – Poland
Participating countries:
Austria, Belarus, Czech Republic, England, Germany, Israel, Ireland, Kazakhstan, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Moldova, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine, Wales.
Competition:
Day 1:
- Recognition of five different sorts of honey presented in glass jars with a possibility to taste (heather, rape, honeydew, acacia, buckwheat).
- Work in a bee colony – finding a marked queen in a nucleus with 4 frames within 2 minutes time limit.
- Beekeeper’s knowledge about queen marking: fitting the right colors with the right years of the queen’s birth (5 colors, 5 years).
- Beekeeper’s practice 1: Recognition of beekeeper´s tools – select the equipment, which is used in queen rearing, out of a group of eight objects.
- Recognition of bee forage plants: fitting samples of seed presented in glass jars with pictured of the plant or crop (rape, buckwheat, phacelia, sunflower, apple tree).
- Beekeeper’s practice 2: setting up a beehive from different parts in the right order, incl. pollen trap.
Day 2:
- Microscopy: not the real use of microscope, but displaying a series of pictures on the screen, portraying different parts of the bee’s body under microscope. The participant had to match the pictures with the right text from a list of items available to the participant on the table.
- Academic knowledge: test from beekeeping theory
Winners
Individuals:
1st place – David Wackernell (Austria)
2nd place – Volodymyr Khodakovskyy (Ukraine)
3rd place – Marta Wachowska (Poland)
Countries:
1st place – Austria
2nd place – Germany
3rd place – Poland
The 5th International Meeting of Young Beekeepers in Poland has been the largest event so far with 19 participating countries and ended in a very successful way thanks to the great organization of the event by the Polish beekeepers. It followed the tradition of the previous meetings and it offered a full and rich program which consisted of a competition for young beekeepers and cultural and social program. The competition took two days during which the participants had to go through many interesting disciplines which examined their skills and knowledge about beekeeping. Besides the competition itself, there was a cultural and social programme, which was partly different for the young people (e.g. a disco, voluntary sports activities on a football pitch) and the accompanying adults (e.g. visit of a museum in the former concentration camp of Lublin-Majdanek), who were not allowed to assist or observe their teams during the competition. 
All participants, the young and adult together, were able to take part in an organized tour of the city of Lublin as well as visit a local Sunday honey fair. The major social event, taking half a day, was the presentation of each of the participating countries by the young beekeepers themselves which was opened for creativity and which provided a lot of entertainment as well as many interesting facts but it also helped other participants to better understand the culture and habits of the particular country.
As far as the communication is concerned, the language, which was the most commonly spoken among children or adults at this event, was English. Some countries from Eastern Europe prefered to communicate in Russian. German interpretation was also available systematically. However, the rule is that all test questions and instructions during the competition were available for the young participants in the languages of their countries. In spite of the differences of native languages of different participants, the young beekeepers as well as the adult ones found a way to communicate together easily, exchanged many ideas and experience and enjoyed a nice time spent together during the IMYB 2015 in Poland.
For more photos, visit our gallery.