On behalf of everyone at the Scottish Beekeepers’ Association and all the people we’ve engaged with across the country, we’d like to extend our heartfelt thanks to everyone at Vegware for your generous support. Your contributions have been instrumental in helping us promote beekeeping, educate communities and enhance pollinator habitats.
2024 has been another buzzy one, filled with practical workshops, face-to-face meetings, winter webinars, schools visits, international competitions and shows. It’s been a hive of activity throughout the year!
Our education workshops have been a hit, helping us to fulfil one of our charitable objectives of ‘Keeping the skill, heritage and culture of beekeeping alive in Scotland’. Many members and non-members have enjoyed learning about beeswax and how to produce beautiful products from their own hives, what is needed to extract honey, and the traditional art of skep making.
We continue to focus on Young Beekeepers in Scotland, and were delighted to have so many engage with us. We spent a very enjoyable day in Dollar at the Royal Highland Education Trust (RHET) Farm to Fork day. Over 300 pupils from local primary schools toured the farm learning more about agriculture as a career. Every pupil received a bee friendship bracelet and some pollinator friendly seeds to sow.
We are very fortunate to have several schools and young beekeepers volunteer as stewards in the Honey Tent at the Royal Highland Show in Edinburgh, where they entertained and educated tens of thousands of visitors over four days. We were also very grateful to Vegware for receiving thousands of compostable ice cream spoons for this show, which we used as part of our honey tasting. Everyone loved the different types of honey to sample and visitors appreciated our efforst to care for the environment.
We were also extremely grateful to receive a donation of compostable hot drink cups for our new event, ApiScotia® at Dumfires House in May. This event was aimed at more experienced beekeepers who wanted to develop their practical skills and knowledge and work towards becoming mentors in their own areas. The event was so successful that we’re hosting it again in 2025 and Vegware has kidly agreed to donate more cups for this event, thank you!
Impact of Your Support
Your monthly funding has allowed us to distribute 1,832 pollinator seed packs (up 80% on 2023) to enable schools, commuity groups, local beekeepers and the public, creating more pollinator friendly spaces. We also gave away 7,490 ‘Bee Happy and What to Grow’ leaflets (up 76% on 2023) and 8,507 bee friendship bracelets (up 47% on 2023) to local beekeeping groups, primary schools, brownies, Royal Highland Show Honey Tent visitors and other groups across Scotland, including Aberdeen, Aboyne, Arran, Ayr, Borders, Cambuslang, Dalgety Bay, Dingwall, Dollar, Fife, Kilbarchan, Lanarkshire, Moray, Orkney, Nairn, Newbattle to Speyside.
These bee friendship bracelets also made their way to Dubai in December, to the International Meeting of Young Beekeepers (IMYB) where Team Scotland gave them out to participants from over 20 countries across the globe. They were well received by all!#
We are looking forward to 2025 and shall continue to ensure we meet our main chairtable aims of supporting honeybees and hobby beekeepers across Scotland. We couldn’t do any of this without our many volunteers, members and supporters like you, Vegware.
We continue to focus on Young Beekeepers in Scotland, and were delighted to have so many engage with us. We spent a very enjoyable day in Dollar at the Royal Highland Education Trust (RHET) Farm to Fork day. Over 300 pupils from local primary schools toured the farm learning more about agriculture as a career. Every pupil received a bee friendship bracelet and some pollinator friendly seeds to sow.
We continue to focus on Young Beekeepers in Scotland, and were delighted to have so many engage with us. We spent a very enjoyable day in Dollar at the Royal Highland Education Trust (RHET) Farm to Fork day. Over 300 pupils from local primary schools toured the farm learning more about agriculture as a career. Every pupil received a bee friendship bracelet and some pollinator friendly seeds to sow.
