Difference between revisions of "Team:Tec-Chihuahua/lab book"

The months we worked on this project, we had the opportunity to establish contact with different beekeepers and beekeeping societies. We began in the places nearest to our city and expanded to the rest of the country (and the world). Thanks to this we could comprehend their necessities and adapt to these, so our services can be the most comfortable and efficient.

On several occasions, we had the pleasure of talking with the beekeeping association of Cuauhtemoc City, Chihuahua, where we showed them our proposal and received feedback about the characteristics that they search for in a product: efficacy, simplicity in application, good prices, and infrequent application. In the beginning, we wanted to apply the solution as purified peptides either as a liquid or dusted over hives. Nonetheless, when it is dispersed on a hive’s box, it is threatened by foragers, wind or other insects. We decided that the best option was for the product to be added to the bee’s feeders.

During our stance in Delicias, to the IV State Beekeeping Forum, we had the chance to assist to several apiaries, where we approached bees and discovered the real impact of our product. Seeing the working conditions of beekeepers helped us identify the need for an efficient and functional product; any inconvenience in its application would results in hours lost, because of the number of hives kept. In this same way, we established contact with companies that deliver beekeeping products with which we could have a future partnership for national distribution. Beekeepers mentioned in this Forum that they’d like to see our finished project or research in the future.

From Valencia, Spain, we had contact with several beekeepers that commented, based on experience, how these diseases are treated. They told us antibiotics are distributed in the food but it contaminates pollen and makes it inadequate for human consumption, which creates economic losses for apiculture. This is why we decided to use only honeybee-native AMPs, to avoid exportation problems.

Likewise, we were given the opportunity to talk to the Italian Federation of Apiculture, who gave us their unconditional support for the validation of our project, to promote the precise development of our product; we were also assured that they could back commercialization across Italy.

Finally, Chile’s association brought us full support and mentioned they’d be willing to put our product in the Chilean market. Their disposition comes from their interest in fighting these diseases, which invigorated us to keep working on the project.

Raúl Lizarraras Durán

During the development of our business plan and the general activities of the entrepreneurship area, we went to Raúl Lizarraras several times in search of advice. Your support has served us since the first day, as it gave us its support to resolve specific questions about specific issues in the business plan. After this, he collaborated with us, providing us with his extensive knowledge in the area to solve questions from the different teams, all of them focused on his expertise area in order to make the most of his support. In addition to helping us in that way, he was in charge of creating contact between us and other experts in business development so that they would support us, like him, with the questions that the teams asked us. Likewise, he supported us when we finalized our business plan, with the intention of making the pertinent corrections to perfect our work.

Luis Miguel Almanza Rueda

Thanks to his constant support, we managed to give an initial sense and structure to our business plan, we organized several meetings with him, always with the intention of resolving specific doubts about important points for the business plan, which at the time were complicated to realize, however, his help facilitated the process to develop them, he gave us suggestions, ideas and his total support in the creation of our business plan.

Ph.D. David de Jong

Thanks to our approach with the Mexican society of veterinarians specialists in bees, especially with MVZ Ernesto Tanus Sánchez, we managed to establish contact with Ph.D. David de Jong, who is an expert in bees and their diseases. His experience was very useful for the development of our product. He, like the MVZ that Ernesto Tanus had mentioned to us, said that if we are going to start a business, we should follow a legislature and we should evaluate the risks that our product involves. We decided to add to our legal section some things that cover those points, to complement our legal plan and add these points to the business plan Also, he was in charge of asking us some important questions, with the purpose that we as a company contemplated if it was feasible, economically speaking, that our product was created and launched to the market, since it made us compare the expenditure of investment in the peptides and the approximate final price of our product.

Mr. Manuel Ramírez Salcido

The salient engineer shared with us his concern about the fact that the government offers very little attention to the apicultural sector, so we came up with the idea that, when our product can be released to the market, to make an agreement with the government, in which This will support us as a Mexican company and beekeepers by creating a program of support for prevention and cure of American foulbrood and European foulbrood, which would consist in the government supporting us economically to develop our company, and thus be able to become international , and in return we would compensate you by granting a certain percentage of our production, so that they can provide free support to beekeepers who suffer from this disease in their hives.

Ph.D. Maria Mercedes Roca

During our video call with Dr. Roca, she mentioned that when we decided to start with our company it would be good if we generated an agreement with a pharmaceutical company that would have the infrastructure to perform the nanoencapsulation, so that we would not have to buy the machinery that is required to carry out this process, we analyze your proposal and for that reason we decided that instead of buying this infrastructure from us, it was a better option to rent it to a company that already did this process, and thus benefit both parties.