No Honeybees, No Food! URGENT - please just send a short email, before Jan. 19, 2018!

PLEASE HELP stop a few ignorant NJ politicians from decimating our healthiest population of our own state insect - the industrious, NON-AGGRESSIVE, reluctant-to-sting little Honeybee! 

Anyone who has tasted some local honey from a backyard hobbiest (or from my favorite beekeeper/honeybee whisiperer, Joseph Lelinho of Hilltop Honey) will want to help prevent these ridiculous pending regulations.

Send a quick email to: proposedrulesplantindustry@ag.state.nj.us 

We might be able to stop this, if a lot of us send an email. 

http://www.nj.com/news/index.s...


Nothing?

Well, I'm still hopeful you all will take 2 minutes to send an email! smile 


Yes, I did send an email.


I just sent mine as well! (Good luck!)


Thank you to those above and to the others who sent a private message saying they'd sent an email!!

Really hoping we can help stop this!

In case it is helpful to have a bit more info, I'm pasting the text of an email circulated by a professional beekeeper that speaks to a potentially very negative side-effect of this legislation to those who DO plan to comply with the new rules IF we fail to stop them as they are currently written. (The bolding of text was done by me to emphasize these important points.)

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To my Clients,

Beekeeping in NJ may be going through a major change if a Rule before the States Legislature is approved.  The representatives will be voting on a proposal January 19th, 2018. (Bill Listed Below) This bill directly affects Hobbyist Beekeepers, by eliminating keeping bees on any property less than a quarter acre.   Thus, most hobbyists will either give up their backyard hives or keep their hives and “Go Dark”.  By Going Dark, I mean not register their hives each year with the State for fear of being punished.  

The downside to not registering is that the hives are not listed as active and therefore the keeper will not be notified by County Mosquito Commissions or Pest Control Companies when spraying for mosquitos or weed applications.  Without these warnings, hives will be over-sprayed without any notice and many colonies will die.  Dead colonies translate into reservoirs of disease in the honeybee community.  That is, a toxic hive will be visited by other colonies for their honey within a 5-mile radius!  Honey from a diseased hive can transmit American Foul Brood, a bacterial disease in which the hive must be burned in total to keep it from spreading its deadly disease.

Therefore, the new rule may not affect us directly from a property size standpoint but indirectly we’ll be on the front lines from the unintended consequences of a poorly written rule.  “Poorly written”, because none of our beekeepers, researchers, scientist or even our State Apiarist, Tim Schuler, were asked to participate in the fact-finding.  Ironically, as you know New Jersey is known as the Garden State and Honeybees are the State insect!! 

If you can email (address listed below) the state and voice your opposition to this rule we may be able to send it back to committee when the beekeepers and the other experts will be heard.  Feel free to share this with others at your company, even friends, and family every letter helps.

Email: 
Joseph Zoltowski, Director
proposedrulesplantindustry@ag.state.nj.us 

http://www.state.nj.us/agriculture/rule/PRN%202017-216%20(49%20NJR%203565(a)).pdf 

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