Yvonne Davidson’s Guest Blog: My Life in Beekeeping.

Introduction.

Yvonne and I met through the Healthy BEES courses and became friends. I’m inspired by Yvonne’s energy and enthusiasm for beekeeping and teaching. She’s modest and hasn’t told you that she mentored young Martin Leahy who won the International Young Beekeeper 2019 award http://www.snhbs.scot/snhbs-member-martin-leahy-becomes-international-young-beekeeper-2019/

Yvonne is also an active supporter of the Scottish Native Honey Bee Society and has many strings to her bow. She makes a fabulous liquor from young beech leaves and is a successful gardener. She and James live in rural Aberdeenshire not far from Balmoral Castle on Royal Deeside. Her work has attracted attention from people in high places as you will discover in her fascinating guest blog.

My life in beekeeping started at the tender age of 4 when I watched my first swarm being run into a hive by my dad.  James Alexander England, Sandy, to everyone who knew him. Dad loved his bees and passed on that love and fascination to me. He had a great love of nature encompassing all flora and fauna and was an environmentalist ahead of the times. He gained his Master Beekeepers Certificate from the SBA in 1970 when I was 8 years old having completed a course at Craibstone in Bucksburn, Aberdeen.

Hence, I had a very fortunate start to my bee keeping years, encouraged to be his ‘go for’ and taken to all his out apiaries when he went to ‘do the bees’.  Most of the apiaries were within 5 to 10 miles of home and we travelled by motor bike!! It was a Triumph Tiger Cub, which he had renovated and adapted to carry his bee stuff.

This was long before bee suits were common and a white stockman’s coat with elastic bands at the wrists was his chosen ‘protective’ clothing.  I was encouraged to wear a brimmed hat and a net veil tucked into my tee-shirt.

I grew to love the bees as much as he did and of course loved the honey too.  At extraction time I remember standing on the kitchen table to crank the handle of the extractor as the honey flowed out.  The honey was always given away to family and friends and I never knew of him selling any.

When my husband and I moved to Tarland in 1989 my dad turned up with 4 stocks of bees in the works van two days later, announcing that this was a great place for the bees.  James was, as you can imagine, a little concerned about this.  So far, beekeeping, was something I left the house to do. I did not bring any bees home with me!!  However, they were duly located in the garden and after a year had done no harm and James had become accustomed to them.

Over the years my dad’s bees became more and more my responsibility, so I took a few local courses in bee keeping thinking that I would learn to do beekeeping ‘properly’. Of course, it was all familiar to me and I discovered how fortunate I was to have my Dad as a mentor.

Some years later I was cajoled into doing a number of bee keeping talks in the early 2000’s and really enjoyed it.  In 2013 I was approached to give a talk in Tarland about bee keeping which I happily agreed to and was amazed at the level of local interest. I was pretty much a lone beekeeper at that point, just getting help from dad and sharing the crop with him.  That first talk in Tarland led to the inception of Tarland Bee Group and it has been a fast track of mentoring, learning and volunteering since then.  The group has a lovely membership and we have managed to achieve amazing things together.  We are fortunate to be under the umbrella group of Tarland Development Group and have the kind support of The MacRobert Trust Estate whom we lease our sites from.  We lease hives to beginners, giving them an opportunity to experience bee keeping for a year or two without the expense of setting up.  This has been extremely popular, and the arrangement includes half the honey crop coming back to the group, so we have an income from that.  We also raise nucs to sell to beginners. We have a queen rearing group each year, which is really just group learning, but very popular and surprisingly successful, getting better each year.

Teaching bee keeping has now become a passion and although I have many decades of experience, I had no qualifications, so, I embarked on several courses.  The ‘Healthy Bees’ project has been terrific, a great way to learn and an opportunity to meet other beekeepers. We had SASA in Tarland for their Bee Health Day in 2017, and Steve Sunderland (Lead bee Inspector) and the team have been great supporters of the group, as I am sure his replacement Luis Molero Lopez will be too. I have also started my SBA (Scottish Beekeeping Association) modules, gaining Numbers 1 – 6 so far, but currently on hold for 7 & 8 due to Covid. Conferences are also a great place to learn and meet new beekeepers and old friends and I love attending these. I can also thoroughly recommend volunteering for the Bee Tent at The Royal Highland Show, always a fun day (or two) out.

The Bee Group also gets involved in bulb planting, tree planting, litter picking, orchard tidying and many other things in the community which improve the environment for all pollinators.

I am glad to be a part of Tarland Bee Group and grateful for the opportunity to pass on my knowledge to others, volunteering is both rewarding and exhausting in equal measure. It is a privilege to be part of such a vibrant group and to be truly involved in the community, something my dad would wholeheartedly approve of.

Thank You, Yvonne.

A big thank you to Yvonne for supporting Beelistener and sharing her story with us. Yvonne gives a great presentation to beekeeping associations on her beekeeping adventures and she might share it via Zoom. By the way, the history of the MacRobert trust is quite a story too and worth reading about: http://www.themacroberttrust.org.uk/about-the-trust/history/