Steve Chard, Supervisor for the Illinois Department of Agriculture, clarified his policy regarding moving permits for producers in a recent ISBA newsletter. The following is an extraction from pages 2-3 of the January – February 2015 issue.
In response to the request of the Illinois Queen Initiative (IQI) and others, the Department has created a new moving permit policy for transporting queens across county or state lines. This was shared with you in a previous ISBA Bulletin. This policy is intended to facilitate the sale or exchange of queens, queen cells and frames of brood and at the same time, prevent the spread of diseases and pests of the honeybee. The new policy has been approved by the ISBA Officers/Board of Directors and IQI. It became effective January 1, 2015 and is shown below.
The Department will follow the steps below for issuing general moving permits to producers selling/exchanging queens, queen cells and frames of brood:
- Queen Producers will notify their respective Department Apiary inspector by February of each year that they plan to exchange or sell queens across county or state lines.
- As soon as the weather is conducive for inspections, queen producers will contact Department Apiary Inspectors to make arrangements for an inspection of the colonies used to produce queens in the spring.
- Once the inspection is completed, the Department Apiary Inspector will send the inspection report to the Department’s headquarters no later than the following day.
- Upon receipt of the inspection report, the Department will issue a general moving permit to the queen producer as quickly as possible, but no later than 7 days, on the condition that the colonies do not have significant disease or pest problem that could harm bees in other apiaries.
- Unless the Department denies the issuance of a general moving permit, if the queen producer does not receive the general moving permit within 7 days of the inspection, the producer may go forward with moving the queens without the general moving permit.
- The general moving permit will allow the queen producer to move the queens anywhere in Illinois or outside of Illinois.
- The general moving permit is effective for 90 days.
- At least 10 days prior to the expiration of the 90-day period, the Department Apiary Inspector will inspect the original or new colonies and the same process for issuing the general moving permit starts over.
- In order for this process to work effectively, queen producers must communicate with the Department’s Apiary Inspectors in a cooperative and timely manner.
