Contact Your Local Rep

We need everybody to speak up about H.205. If you think the requirement to become a certified beekeeper is restrictive, speak up. Here’s the latest from the VBA:

H. 205 – Your Help is Needed – Contact Your Legislator
Regulation of Neonicotinoid Pesticides
 For a few weeks we’ve been following the status of H.205 in the Vermont legislature. After submitting our original comments to the House Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, VBA President Jack Rath DVM testified to the committee on Thursday, February 28.

Now we need your help. Rather than provide a cookie-cutter form letter, we ask you to please contact your legislators and ask them to support H.205 with the amendments offered by the Vermont Beekeepers Association.Those amendments to the bill are available here (highlighted) but you may want to use this summary which explains our intent and the purpose of our recommendations on H.205.

As always, when interacting with your legislator or anyone in a position to help us, we ask you to keep in mind you are representing a greater purpose. Be friendly, positive and respectful. Most importantly, if you don’t know an answer to a question, simply say you don’t know but will be happy to find someone who can help. Then do so!

Mondays are good days to contact your local reps since they are usually home for meetings or legislative breakfasts. And if you don’t know who your local legislator is, please use this tool to find out:
Find your State Legislator
Finally, let us know what kind of response you receive when interacting with your local representatives.
It would be most helpful if you posted the results of your interactions: email, phone call, or personal meeting, in the forum we’ve been using to discuss H.205. That forum is available here. You will need to login to the VBA website to join the discussion.

Thank you for your help and if you have any questions please email:
Andrew Munkres at vicepresident@vermontbeekeepers.org or
Scott Wilson at membership@vermontbeekeepers.org.

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