APIARY INSPECTION HAS BEEN RELAXED.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 142, 17 June 1931, Page 7

APIARY INSPECTION HAS BEEN RELAXED.

PART-TIME OFFICERS ARE DISPENSED WITH.

The necessity for apiarists to maintain the standard of their hives until the forty or fifty part-time inspectors, whose services have been dispensed with by the Government for economic reasons, are reinstated, was a point made by Mr E. A. Earp, Chief Apiary Inspector, speaking at the annual conference of the National Beekeepers’ Association of New Zealand this morning. Mr Earp said that the inspection work now devolved on the seven permanent officers of the Agricultural Department. It was unfortunate that the part-time officers were now not employed. They had done excellent work in the eradication of foul brood. “ Whether Parliament will vote more money remains to be seen. Unless we have that money I cannot say when the system will be started again,” he said. “ For the present we are concentrating on holding the ground we have made until we get the additional inspectors back.” Co-operation Urged. If the beekeepers joined interests they could maintain prices and hold the industry together. Some of them had got panicky and had sold at lower prices than if they had held on to their produce longer. He hoped that the conference would do something concrete in the way of steadying prices and assisting the industry generally.