a Bill T snip...
Based on the proficiency of some Master Beekeepers I have seen, they have
done neither. It is a fairly watered down title.

my reflection on the subject...
first off for the positive.... hats off to Jerry for what appears to be an on going process of certification for folks with various levels of education and experience.  The fact that he has included folks in designing and modifying this program with a long resume of keeping bees certainly adds credibility to his efforts.

and now for the not so positive...
The program here (Texas) is now less than one year old and appears to be significantly taken from the master beekeeper's program in Florida.  My own contact with apprentice-journeymen-master programs is via the skilled trades (electrician, welders, pipe fitters and plumbers).  This experience has perhaps biased me in that a certain level of book knowledge is required but any advancement to the journeymen or masters level requires a good deal of hands on experience.  This hands on requirement does seem to be significantly devalued item in the program here < to my own understanding one only needs to have kept one hive of bees at sometime in the past to qualify... with no mention if a person did or did not manage to keep that one hive alive.  Casually this seems to me to be setting the bar very low.  I did 'rent' the hives for the first master beekeepers 'hands on' test here and at the end of the day the crowd had only managed to kill 1/4 of the queens in the 12 hives I brought to the event.   As a very casual observation the person running the show did not seem to give any basic instruction to the people monitoring the 'students' and only 3 of the 6 monitors had the essential experience to say yea or nay to whether the students did or did not perform the basic task required.  At least two of the folks who I brought into beekeeping 10 years ago think the program is more about 'empire building' than about producing folks with master beekeeping skills.  With 3 or 4 university degrees (depending on how you might count such things) I do not devalue book learning but at the end of the day book knowledge will not make you even an adequate apprentice beekeeper.

       

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