IHPA 
Working to protect and improve your rights as beekeepers

Your state organization is always working to protect our current laws and regulations around beekeeping. We do this by having our own lobbyist at the capitol and by suggesting new legislation that will better our industry. 

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Currently we are working to finally get honey bee sales added to the list of tax exempt agricultural products. We have been fighting for this since the 2022 legislative session. We have received zero votes against this action in any sub committee, the house, or senate. The unfortunate fact is that it is not a high profile bill, and because it is tax related it is put to the bottom of the pile. Funnel week hits and no representitive takes it upon themselves to push it through. This is our 5th year of trying to get this bill passed. 

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We also have been in the crosshairs of the Ag Sprayers as they would like to do away with our Bee Rule that states that a crop in bloom can not be sprayed with anything marked toxic to honey bees within 1 mile of a registered apiary between the hours of 8am and 6pm. The main argument is that there are too many beekeepers in Iowa... That's like trying to make up a rule to get rid of corn farmers in the state because there are too many of them. You don't get rid of rules because there are too many farmers of a type, you make those rules stronger to protect those farmers. They note that 1 mile is too large of an area, but 1 mile was already a compromise made when the rule was created. The original university study said 2 miles. The times of spraying are in question, but they too were a compromise because we as beekeepers know our bees are out foraging from sun up to sun down. They also want to omit Corn from the clause because bees don't forage on corn unless they have to due to lack of other food. Well the whole reason the bee rule was created was because of the chemicals being used on corn and how many of our colonies were being decimated due to them.