I received a Dear Members letter from David Mendes of ABF with the sentence "The success of the Serious Sideliner Symposium and the nationwide demand for additional beekeeping classes is pushing us to develop a national comprehensive certification for beekeepers."

I see a certification program causing harm in several ways:
 1) if it discourages nonstandard management practices and innovation, the industry loses.
 2) it will give plaintiffs' lawyers a stick to beat us with, including commercials who see no knowledge benefit from going through certification
 3) it could easily morph into a licensing requirement and restrict entry
 4) ABF has limited resources and there are other projects with higher benefit-cost ratio

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