By Sharon Omahen


University of Georgia

Myron Schaer was a food scientist by profession, but his heart
belonged to beekeeping. He was, for the most part, a self-taught
apiarist who loved tending his hives and marketing his honey to
stores in Rome, Ga.

When he did have a beekeeping problem he couldn’t solve, he’d
call on University of Georgia entomologist Keith Delaplane, whom
he’d met through the Georgia Beekeepers Association.

“Myron never made extraordinary demands of my time,” recalls
Delaplane, a honeybee researcher with the UGA College of
Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. “I got a phone call or
two from him and he’d ask a question or two after a meeting.”

$200,000 and beekeeping equipment

Apparently, Schaer truly appreciated Delaplane’s advice and
supported his honeybee research program. When he died last fall,
he left a $200,000 estate donation and $3,000 worth of beekeeping
equipment to Delaplane’s research program.

“This has been a humbling and sobering lesson,” said
Delaplane, who
accepted the donation for the university this month.

“In the education business we can never take lightly our
potential impact on our clientele,” he said. “What to us appears
a simple and routine inquiry can represent a major issue in the
life of the inquirer.”

Schaer’s donation will be used to establish the Myron Schaer
Memorial Endowment to support of honeybee research and
education at UGA. The equipment was actually donated last spring
by Schaer’s sisters, Dora Barra and Frances Mercer.

“Myron always loved insects as a boy,” Barra said. “So we weren’t
surprised when he began beekeeping.”

Food scientist and outdoorsman

Schaer grew up near Lockville in Fairfield County, Ohio, on a
160-acre farm. He was an active 4-H’er who used his 4-H award
winnings to buy a farm tractor and his first car.

After serving as an engineer in the U.S. Navy, Schaer attended
The Ohio State University on the GI Bill. He earned a bachelor’s
degree in food science and began working for the PET Food
Corporation bakery division in 1962. He worked as a quality
control supervisor for the company until he retired in 1992.

“He started beekeeping in 1980 as a hobby,” said Mercer. “But
after he retired, beekeeping became his vocation.”

Schaer processed and bottled his honey and sold it to
supermarkets and country stores in the Rome, Ga., area under the
name Penataka.

“We’re told Penataka is an American Indian word for sweet,” Barra
said. “Myron enjoyed the Indian culture and adopted a lot of
their philosophies — particularly that of living on the land and
giving back to the land.”

He understood the importance of research

Schaer’s sisters say he decided to support UGA’s research program
in his will when it became clear to him that he was not going to
recover from cancer.

“Myron was scientific by training, so he understood the
importance of Dr. Delaplane’s work,” Mercer said.

Schaer’s beekeeping equipment is being used by Delaplane’s
students.

“They used the hives and the equipment in their classes last
spring and will continue to do so,” Delaplane said. “I learned
from Myron to treat each client seriously and give them the full
benefit of your attention. We can never fully know what that will
mean in the life of that person.”