>We do have our share of anarchist anti regulation folks here and of course they are opposed to anything anyone wants to do no matter if it has merit or not. Sadly folks new to all this never learned as to why these kind of laws were implemented in the first place and therefore only see their cost and not their value..    Thanks Gene, at least we are not alone.

We in Washington St. have no functional state apiary program whatever. That is particularly alarming since we have the second largest pollination contract industry in the nation requiring about 500,000 colonys for tree and cane fruit, vegetable seed, berries, and an increasing oil seed crop. The great majority of the pollinating colonys are on the Calif. to Midwest circuit stopping in after almonds for a few weeks work in the orchards. They come in the night and go in the night without any inspection or regulation or tax collection. That is how most commercial operations want it to stay and most likely it will. With the increase in almond acreage and the reduced forage in the Midwest more colonys are staying in the state for the summer in feedlot conditions with no regulation on locations or numbers.  

We do have a "mandatory" registration program that is very sporadically followed. For a modest registration fee on a sliding scale (I pay $25 for 100 colonys) we get no defined service or program. In the states defense all registration fees are held in a designated account and distributed at the recommendation of the Apiary Advisory Committee (I sit on the committee) to help fund research and most recently to fund a pollinator friendly demonstration park. I am amused whenever I read advise to consult your state inspector. We have nun. Our last inspector, the late Jim Bach, was retired and the program closed in the 90s over a  law suit brought by a group of disgruntled beekeepers that challenged the mandatory registration and tax. There was also his refusal to certify some "postmortem splits" for spray compensation but we need not go into that. 

For those in states with good and effective programs I hope you will respond to Aaron's call. Perhaps state land grant universities are the proper home for effective programs but alas they lack any regulatory authority and are already struggling for what scant resources the state provides. One thing is sure, there is room for improvement.  

Paul Hosticka
Dayton WA  

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