> I recently became a member of the NYS Apiary Industry Advisory 
> Committee after an invitation from Ag and Markets Commissioner Ball.

Resign quickly, before you end up being viewed as a collaborator and partly
responsible for the acts of NY Ag and Markets.
Your participation on the AIAC rubber-stamp committee will bring you nothing
but frustration, and will prompt some of your current customers to take
their business elsewhere.
Read up on the collaborator Marshal Philippe Petain.

> What does NYS need to do to improve the program?

Burn what exists to the ground, stir the ashes until cold, and copy some
other state's program, perhaps PA or Ohio, AND FUND IT.
New York simply lacks the intellectual prowess to create something new.
It will be hard enough to simply get funding to tangibly support beekeepers.

> What would the ideal Apiary program in NYS look like?

No need to reinvent the wheel, NYS has moribund state organizations due to
the same politics of self-dealing and corruption that makes Ag & Markets a
joke rather than an asset.  There are lots of excellent state-level apiary
programs, but they have extension staff, funding, and are not dominated by
non-beekeeping interests.

Over and over, a tiny number of people attempt to force beekeepers into a
regulatory scheme that does nothing for them, but creates more bureaucracy,
in hope of justifying a larger budget.  The "Farm Bureau" is inevitably
leveraged to "support" these attempts, even though the Farm Bureau has an
insignificant number of members who are beekeepers, and commits fraud by
claiming to represent the interests of a beekeeper demographic that they
diametrically oppose on most tangible issues.  Their lobbying needs to be
seen for what it is - the agenda of pesticide companies and farmers, who
often don't just misunderstand the needs of beekeepers, they overtly work
against them.  The AIAC has never been consulted on any issue of
significance, and has never been anything but window-dressing.

This latest attempt to register hives and yards is the same camel that tried
to stick its nose into the tent several years before, and the AIAC was just
as ignorant of and disconnected from the effort then as it is now.  This
alone is an excellent test case to make clear to all that the AIAC is not
consulted when policy is being developed concerning beekeeping.

One need look no further than the NY "Pollinator Protection Plan" to see
that funding that might have been spent to actually do something tangible to
serve the needs of beekeepers was wasted on rationalization and
justification of a set of policies that do nothing at all for beekeepers,
even to the point of blaming beekeepers for pesticide kills.  The
interesting thing was that, despite the circa 2015 "NY Pollinator Protection
Integrated Task Force", several states were strong-armed with nearly
identical "proposals" from each respective state's Farm Bureau, almost as if
there was a national strategy (**cough**  Croplife **cough**) to deflect and
blunt the ability of the Obama-mandated "pollinator protection" directive to
actually enforce the laws on the books, such as FIFRA, and limit the overt
misuse of any pesticides, despite the clear Presidential Directive to do
exactly that. 

As an example of how some money might have been better spent, Pat Bono had
to fight tooth and nail to get "NY Bee Wellness" going, and the org runs
hand-to-mouth on a shoestring budget and a volunteer staff as a NGO.   Do
they get ANY state funding?  

I can't comment on the inspections, but my understanding is that they are
undermanned, under-trained, and not held in high regard by anyone.

None of this affects me in the least, as I am a mere "hobby beekeeper" since
I sold my operation, but it does annoy me to see the pathetic waste of any
part of the insane taxes I pay.  Fair warning, we have none of the personal
access to senior aides in the Cuomo administration like we had when Spitzer
and Patterson were governors, so there will be no repeat of the magical
de-funding  of any programs or departments that are openly toxic to the
interests of beekeepers.  (Gosh, that was fun though, wasn't it?)

Full Disclosure:  If nominated, I will not run, if elected, I will not
serve.  I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed,
or numbered.

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