FAB>From: Faith Andrews Bedford <[log in to unmask]>
   >Date:         Mon, 28 Jul 1997 13:12:40 -0400
   >Subject:      Re: Foulbrood
 
FAB>I was undert the impression that any hive with AFB had to reported to a sta
   >bee inspector, the bees killed and the hives either burned, scorched or
   >treated in a "gas" chamber.  Am I wrong?  Is that info outddated?
 
Hi Faith,
 
Many states and countries do still have old laws on the books as you
describe. It may well bee that their laws are out dated, and not the
information as you remember it.
 
A few states no longer use the AFB laws to regulate beekeeping as many
once did, and the old slash and burn technique is no longer the
beekeeping practice when a single cell of AFB is found or a mite in
most bee outfits.
 
The states that are so to speak deregulated, some officially some
unofficially, because they have come to realize that the health of the
honeybee is the beekeepers responsibility and not the governments and
they can no longer devote man power and money to provide a service that
we have been doing for ourselves from the year one anyway and a service
that is readily available outside of the regulatory community if any
individual beekeepers cannot do his own.
 
Beekeeping regulation is in the same class as all "blue laws", and if
the people in any area can do without buying meat on Sunday's its none
of my business, the same if one area is doing well with having someone
from the government help them with their bee health problems, more
power to them. My own experience with government is that what starts out
as help usually ends up as interference, and that to change a bad law is
much harder then to pass one in the first place.
 
I know of no bee law's or lack of bee law's that has made any difference
in the actual health of our bees that are prone to get anything and
everything that is said to be bad in the bee world be it disease, pest,
or predators all which have no respect for the written law.
 
Maybe it is one of nature's or God's law's that "honeybees and their
keepers shall bee tested"... Who are those four horseman I see riding
through my bee yards anyway? In the past one was the bee inspector for
sure, with deregulation in California it is seldom the case today. And
yes we still have honeybees, both in the hive and in the wild, and yes
they do have disease, pests, and predators, but beekeepers may be the
one's who are suffering the most as the value of honey slides and not
because of any problem with their bees other then the increasing costs
of keeping them alive and well from the end of one bee season to
another.
 
ttul, the OLd Drone
 
 
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