> All in all, it's a decision made by those who are affected - the professional beekeepers.  Overall, they support the state bee law - the alternatives are worse. 

Well, there is a different story in NYS. For decades the bee inspectors were also commercial beekeepers. The records on registered bee yards were closely guarded by the government but the bee inspectors knew where they were. They took advantage of that information to site their bee yards in good locations that they had found out about by inspecting their competitor's hives. Often they would use aggressive inspection to intimidate beekeepers. The animosity this system generated caused the program to be defunded in the 1990s. Currently inspection in NYS is a bare shadow of what it once was. They inspect hives for interstate travel and pay little attention to the problems of instate beekeepers. 

P

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