Gavin Ramsay – Chair
Gavin has kept bees from the mid-1990s and since then he has managed to make most of the possible beekeeping mistakes! He chairs SNHBS, helps his local association and presents regularly on bee topics across Scotland and beyond. He used to be the Bee Health and Science Officer for the SBA until May 2020. He has also given up being a plant geneticist, and is starting to find out that running a beekeeping business is not for the easily distracted or the disorganised!
John Durkacz – Vice Chair
John has been beekeeping 40 years. Searching for good native type bees that are well adapted to their locality has been his main motivation for many years. Latterly he has become more interested in looking at a more sustainable and ethical approach to our beekeeping practices. John is currently vice-president of his local beekeeping association and a SBA member. He spends his spare time looking at nature and photography and can still manage reasonable hill walks.
Justine Swinney – Secretary
Justine recently settled in the Borders and began beekeeping in 2018: she has been supporting Kate Atchley in breeding black bees in the Cheviots and hopes to get her own bees this year. Justine also enjoys gardening, spinning (the woolly kind) and weaving.
Margaret Packer – Membership Secretary
Margaret has been keeping bees for about three years. In 2018 she was elected as Chairperson for the Cambuslang Apiary Project (CAP), a peer to peer practical hive skills learning group, where she was secretary the previous two years. Margaret’s related interests are honey-bee conservation and bee breeding. She has a background in biology and has worked in a technical role for the past 13 years or so. She has been known to potter about in allotments with limited success and enjoys an annual jaunt to France in her big blue van conversion.
Sandy Scott – Fundraising
Sandy joined SNHBS at its inaugural meeting. He has been beekeeping since 2014 and is a member of the SBA and a committee member of the ESBA. He runs the ESBA apiary, with mentoring classes for beginners. Sandy is also a presenter on Beekeeping at the RHET’s schools open days at Kinnordy Estate.
Alastair Sharp – Trustee
Alastair took up beekeeping in 2018, having spent a lifetime in law in England and wishing to pursue his long-held but unfulfilled interest in bees in the Highlands, where he now spends much of his time. He is involved in the community being, amongst other things, a Trustee of the Tomintoul and Glenlivet Development Trust. He is developing a small apiary in Glenlivet where he hopes to preserve an exclusion zone to maintain the strain. He is also involved with the North East Breeding Group whose apiary is nearby at the Cabrach.
Sarah Leahy – Treasurer
Sarah started keeping bees in 2013. What started out as a hobby to get her away from work at the computer has become a bit of an obsession. She is on the steering committee for Tarland Bee Group, in Aberdeenshire, where she helps with the beginners’ classes, mentoring and arranging the winter talks. Sarah is quite happy to spend all day beekeeping at her various apiaries across Royal Deeside, but equally is delighted when one of her four lads comes along to help.
David began beekeeping in 2000, when he was made redundant and was casting around for possible alternatives to full time employment. He joined the Aberdeen and District Beekeepers’ Association the same year and is currently the Vice chair of the Association. Today he keeps between 5 and 10 colonies, more for the pleasure of working with them than from a desire to make any money from beekeeping.
David is one step away from being an Expert Beemaster, with the advanced practical still to go, and he has delivered some of ADBKA’s Introduction to Beekeeping classes for several years. He is also a member of BIBBA, CABK and SBA and joined SNHBS at its launch meeting.
[Details to follow]