A Century of Education at the SBA

摘要

EVEN before the founding of our present SBA, beekeeping education in Scotland was considered an important objective. In the old Scottish Beekeeper of Nov 1898 (the organisation publishing this magazine went defunct about 1900), we find an advertisement for a Five Lectures Course on Bees and Beekeeping in the Qlasgow and West of Scotland Technical College by a Miss Fraser. Areas to be covered would be well recognised by current educators, they were: The Honeybee and bee diseases, Products of Bees, Appliances, Manipulation, Swarming and its prevention, Management of the Apiary, Removal and marketing of honey and Winter feeding. Fees for the course were stated as - Moderate. One of the founding aims of the current SBA in 1912 was to provide training materials that would improve Scottish Beekeeping, indeed one of their early slogans was 'Better Beekeeping'. Prior to setting up its own education system SBA members could of course join The British Beekeepers Association and make use of their examinationsystem and two of the successful candidates recorded in one of the early British Bee Journals (Jan 1914) as having obtained the Intermediate Examination Certificate are non-other than G W Avery (founder of the SBA) and J W Moir (founder of The Moir Library).