> Peter L Borst wrote: >I don't want to be misunderstood: it is possible for a state agency to implement a fair, thorough and respectable apiary inspection program.  However, a few things would have to happen. It would have to be run by qualified individuals, unhampered by bureaucratic red tape. 
F'get it! <

Are beekeepers in NYS really so powerless to get reform? Any system for controlling bee diseases in the public interest needs to have all three parts: education, monitoring, and forward planning ready for the next threats.  So, as ESHPA is providing the education on a voluntary basis, they have the moral right to set out  in the public interest the case for a properly administered Apiary Inspection Service to monitor how effective their education on disease control is proving on the ground, and to respond when beekeepers report having disease and request assistance in accordance with existing NYS Apiary Laws. If you do not have data from random inspections, how can you be sure you are doing the right job and plan necessary change and improvements? 

Clearly, what has gone wrong in NYS is not the Apiary Laws but the crass way they have been administered.  So ESHPA will also have to draft simple sensible 'Rules for the NYS Apiary Inspection Service', making clear this is an expert service, to be provided sensitively with the active cooperation of beekeepers, and no longer a re-incarnation of the Spanish Inquisition. 

Then how to move the politicians?  I can offer one case history.  In UK, we have an excellent bee inspection service run by government inspectors, with cooperation from beekeepers.  Our volunteer British Beekeepers Association (20,000 members) provides the education and also lobbies government for funding for research. A few years back, BBKA's requests for funding £6m of research were blocked by officials who said that there was no money.  That was not acceptable to BBKA as the value of honeybees to the UK economy is estimated to exceed £300 million a year. So BBKA decided to use the current high level of public interest in bees by inducing the media to put pressure on the politicians. BBKA took care to clarify and cost its requests, raised a petition with thousands of signatures, organised contingents of beekeepers in veils and carrying lighted smokers to march down Whitehall to the Prime Minister's  office and present the petition, then to return to Parliament for meetings with individual MP's, all with photographers and journalists present.  Other organisations joined in with their own requests behind-the-scenes.  The final outcome was that the government allocated £10 million for research, not the £6m requested, but into all pollinators, not only honeybees. The key was the requests were reasonable, understandable to journalists and the public, without recriminations, clearly widely supported by a majority of beekeepers, and agreement would be a win-win for all (except the Treasury, but they found a way to re-direct funds). 

The majority of ordinary beekeepers in NYS do not seem to have had a chance to speak up. You never know what you can do until you try. 

Wishing you the best of luck! 

Robin 

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