> A point being missed is the enormous impact a few apiary inspections can have on education of individual beekeepers.

I am glad you mentioned that. One of the first beekeepers I met doing inspections told me an instructive tale. He was in his seventies when I met him but both he and his son keep a lot of colonies in NY state. Dad started keeping bees as a boy. 

One day he came home from school and found his bees reduced to embers in a pit. On the door was a note from the bee inspector, saying the bees had been burnt up due to AFB. Highly educational. For many decades this is how NYS inspection operated. They came on your property with no warrant, burnt hives.

Over the years the methods changed. We would make one phone call (a courtesy call, they called it). Whether we got a hold of you or not, we would inspect anyway. Inspectors were pressured to do as many hives as possible. When it rained, we didn't get paid, unless we had paperwork to do. There was always mountains of paperwork.

As it turned out, the inspections were usually done when the beekeeper was not there, since most inspections were done during the work week. I tried to schedule inspections to include the beekeeper, and to use it as a teaching experience. Other inspectors tried to avoid the beekeepers as much as possible because they asked too many questions

PLB

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