Dunblane and Stirling Beekeepers Association - A History

I first became interested in bees when I was in my late teens. My interest was aroused when I found for sale in Heffer's bookshop in Cambridge "The Beekeepers Encyclopedia" by Alexander Deans first published in 1949. I bought it, and became fascinated by the extraordinary lives of these familiar insects.At that age and stage of my life, when I was a student, still living in my parents' home, there was little opportunity for me to think of becoming a beekeeper, since I was away from home so much. I did manage to stir my father's interest in beekeeping, and for quite a few years he became an assistant to Philip Andrews, a neighbour of ours, who kept bees. My father used his considerable skill in woodworking to make hive parts and other useful items, as well as becoming adept himself in handling bees.It was many years later in 1975 that I moved to Dunblane. By that time I was a married man with a settled career as a lecturer at Strathclyde University, and a growing family. There within a year of my arrival, I observed that there was quite a lot of beekeeping going on in the area, and decided to renew my interest in bees. In the autumn of 1976 I joined what was then known as the Dunblane and Stirling Districts Beekeepers' Association, attended in the winter of 1976-77 their beginners' class run during the early months of the 1977 by John Rennie, and in the ensuing spring managed to set up as a beekeeper with my first stock of bees.Since then I have had the pleasure of almost 50 years of beekeeping, and of playing for many years an active role in helping to run the local beekeepers' Association, which I am glad to say continues to flourish. Now that my advancing age is forcing me to cut back on many of the beekeeping and other activities that need the strength and energy of a younger person, I have been asked to write up what I can discover of the history of our Association. Information I have about the years before the 1970s is sketchy, but I have sought what details I can find. I hope there are not too many omissions and errors in what I have written. I shall of course welcome any corrections or additional information that others can let me know about. I hope that at least there will be enough here to interest those arriving newly into beekeeping, and some inspiration to keep promoting the continuing alliance between humans and honey bees, which still struggles to continue in a world producing problems of survival for both bees and humans in ever more threatening forms.