> There seems to be some misconception here. 

Mark's 3 posts in rapid succession on a holiday indicate that my comments of
12/30/13 are worth expanding upon.

What has happened and what comes next for the Empire State Honey Producers
Association makes an excellent cautionary tale for any beekeeping
organization.  

I must stress that I speak only of APPEARANCES here.  
The following is what merely APPEARS to be the case, regardless of the
actual intentions of those involved.
I am sure that many excuses and explanations might be offered, but if one
has to "explain" one's actions, this is a problem in itself.
Any reasonable and well-informed person would draw similar to conclusions to
mine.

The short version is that a struggle seems to continue.  One or more
factions each seem to claim to represent the views of the state's
beekeepers, when neither has bothered to actually ask the beekeepers of NY
anything at all.  So it is all about narrow self-interest wrapped in small
denominations of US currency being claimed to be "grassroots support" just
because it looks green.

> How do you think Board Membership changed 
> this past November? People stood up and got involved.

They stood up and apparently reached into their wallets to buy an election
on the sly and on the cheap.

Why? A subset of commercial operations in NY (I'll collectively describe
them as "rent-seekers" - it is an economics term) attempted in prior years
to leverage rural state legislators and the far-northern county branches of
the NY Farm Bureau to achieve their self-interested goals at taxpayer
expense, but found the effort thoroughly discredited and defunded when it
was exposed to light and air.  So, the recent "takeover" of ESHPA by the
same small group seems to be the first step in an attempt to manufacture the
appearance of "widespread beekeeper support" for what seems the same old
agenda of self-interest.  

The same group had already dominated the NY Apiary Industry Advisory
Committee, a panel established to create the appearance of "industry
support" for a chronically embattled and defunded State Apiary Inspection
program.  This group has such serious problems with NY Sunshine Law
compliance, there was a thread 128 posts long on another beekeeper
discussion forum where the aims of this Committee, the meeting minutes, and
the current list of board members was repeatedly requested, but never
supplied.  Note that the "rent-seeking" group is very well-represented on
the Advisory Committee, at the upstate chapters of the NY Farm Bureau, and
now on the ESHPA board.  

ESHPA's bylaws have long encouraged a tiny fraction of the members to run
roughshod over a process inexplicably labeled as "democracy".  Voting is
limited to those who can attend on a weekday (Friday) in North Syracuse, NY,
conveniently located only 1/2 hour's drive from Lake Ontario, but hours and
hours from anywhere else.  There has never been a "business meeting" held on
Saturday, the second day of the usual ESHPA two-day meeting schedule.  As a
result, very low voting participation is the norm.  In the Fall 2013 ESHPA
newsletter on page 12, one finds that only 34 voting members attended the
summer "business meeting". I had more guests for Christmas dinner!  

So, a small subset of NY commercial beekeeping operations suddenly bought
ESHPA memberships for employees and friends, and made sure that they all had
the day off, transportation to Syracuse for the fall meeting, hotel rooms,
and meals.  The meeting was thereby "packed" to elect a slate that could
serve specific narrow interests, or at least not oppose them.  Prior
administrations had gotten bogged down in addressing the wider interests of
all NY beekeepers, and as a subset, all NY commercial beekeepers.  


What interests?  Read the newspapers - those who bought and paid for the
election will likely advocate for taxpayer-funded payments to commercial
beekeepers who have suffered what they say are pesticide kills.   This will
likely include a naïve attempt to dictate who Cornell hires to replace NY's
retiring research/extension apiculturist.  The group clearly wants to
hand-pick an apiculturist, one that will be inclined to see a "pesticide
kill" as the proximate cause of every commercial hive that fails to thrive.
Sadly, Cornell does not appear to be interested in filling the post.  

More important, it will silence ESHPA's past stridently vocal objections to
the greatly expanded apiary inspection program and its inherent presumption
of a right to ignore the prohibitions against "warrantless search".
Inspections are hoped to assuage fears that inexperienced hobby beekeepers
will become long-term diffuse nuisance sources of diseases and pests for
commercial hives.  More important, the prerequisite registration might
become the mechanism for charging all NY beekeepers a fee to fund the
aforementioned apiculturist.  More rent-seeking.

I'll agree that it does seem massively unfair that the federal government's
Emergency Assistance program "ELAP", sets the baseline "normal loss" for
beekeeping at 17.5%.  I'll say it yet again - if cattle or diary operations
lost even 10% of their herds every year, the National Guard would have been
mobilized.  But should state tax dollars be spent to make beekeepers whole
when children are still going hungry and schools lacking even sufficient
paper for math exercises?

I'll also agree that the attempt to impose a maximum moisture spec as part
of a Honey "Standard Of Identity" was profoundly misguided.  Of course
larger operations pull supers on a schedule that may result in significant
amounts of "wet" honey being harvested, and this honey certainly can be
extracted, sold to a packer, blended with very dry honey, and end up as
"within spec".  But one cannot impose the same requirements on a drum of
honey sold to a packer or a bulk (bakery) user that one would want to see
imposed on a retail jar of table honey.  Sides of beef have a lot more fat
and bone than consumers would find acceptable, that's why butchers use
knives, and create/sell "cuts" of meat.  Same thing here.  Why this could
not have been explained calmly and succinctly long ago, I dunno.  But one
either takes part in the discussion, or one finds that the definitions and
standards are created by others who may not share your values, concerns, or
worldview.  It will be instructive to differentiate between "identity
factors" and "quality factors".

But the ESHPA election of fall 2013 seems to have been an overt attempt to
turn a 501(c)(5) into a political lobbying organization to advocate for the
private inurement of a specific subset of members.  The only way to describe
this is as a "career-ending mistake".  The short-term result will likely be
that ESHPA will lose its tax exemption, and a good chunk of what membership
remains.  The board members would be jointly and severally liable, as D&O
coverage does not cover acts contrary to state and federal law and/or tax
regulations.  

> I don't know how any association can please all of 
> its members all the time or even any time. It is to 
> each of us to find value in associating w/ each other. 
> Or not.

This is a false dichotomy. The honest question to ask is "What can ESHPA do
to restore some semblance of democratic control, and buy itself a chance of
surviving as an entity into 2015?"  Simply put, it must work hard to avoid
further appearances of collusion, influence-peddling, and such:

1)  Implement email voting.  Even PTAs do this nowadays.
2)  Hold business meetings on a weekend, with an agenda that is made widely
available well before the meeting
3)  Broadcast business meetings via Google Hangouts/YouTube, or at least
tape them and put the audio on the website.
4)  Restructure the board to include a seat for each local organization,
filled by a person of the local group's own choosing, each voting a number
of votes equal to the number of local members represented, thus implementing
"one beekeeper, one vote" for all beekeepers that ESHPA claims to represent
5)  Absolutely prohibit overlapping board seats between ESHPA and the NY
Apiary Industry Advisory Committee  
6)  Avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest in general by publically
encouraging the Advisory Committee to fully comply with NY's Sunshine Laws,
and use the ESHPA newsletter and website to report on their meetings in
detail to the public.

These suggestions are aimed at merely making ESHPA visibly live up to its
claim of being "A Statewide Organization to Promote and Protect Interests of
New York State Beekeepers".  



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