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These regulations are actually illegal, as the West Virginia Apiary Act designates all authority over beehives to the West Virginia Department of Agriculture. To counter this, beekeepers throughout the state have banded together to create the “omnibus bee bill”
Mike Lamp, president of the West Virginia Beekeepers Association, told 12 News of some of the instances that led to drafting the bill.
“Things like that happen all over the state. So, if you live in an area where they say ‘you know’ you have to have a permit to keep bees or things like that, you could be paying whatever those fees are every single year, when in reality, you shouldn’t have to do that. Or a local city could say no, we don’t want you to keep bees here when they’re not actually allowed to do that,” Lamp said.
In addition to enforcement of the West Virginia Apiary Act, the omnibus bee bill would also help beekeepers prepare for the tropilaelaps mite, a parasite that can cause diseases to bee colonies but has to be managed in a different way than other parasites like the varroa mite.
The bill is also calling for the funds from specialty pollinator license plates to go toward pollinators in the state of West Virginia, as, according to Lamp, the US saw a 60% decrease in honeybee colonies last year.
“Honeybees are important to agriculture as a whole. If it weren’t for honeybees, we wouldn’t have agriculture the way that we do, so we need to protect honeybees here in West Virginia to make sure that we’re preserving our agricultural heritage as a whole,” Lamp said.
Lamp is encouraging people to reach out to local legislators to help share the word of the importance of the bill. You can read the bill itself here.
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