At 11:35 AM 12/18/01 -0600, you wrote:
>How do other states monitor their hives?

In ohio each county is responsible for hiring (paying) a county inspector.
The state Ag office really does choosing, training and regulating.
We do pay a fee when registering apiaries but it is trivial ($5 per apiary).
There is a state inspector and I believe he is on the states Ag office
staff, but usually the county inspector does all the inspections within the
county.

I don't know what the payscale is, but it has been implied that there is
millage and per hive or apiary pay.  And sometimes the money allocated by
the county isn't enough, so inspections are done until the money runs out.

There seems to be a shortage of inspectors in our area as well.  Judging
buy the number of notices (inspector wanted) from the Ag office we lost our
county inspector and 2 or 3 of the adjacent county inspectors as well as
the state inspector last year.   Our county only replaced ours early fall.
I don't know if there any common thread.  The only inspector I had talked to
(our county one) was planning on retiring due to age and to spend more
time with family.

-Tim Arheit