Butte County Beekeeping Regulations
Local beekeeping rules for Butte County and 5 cities: setback distances, hive limits, registration, and a link to each current municipal code.
Statewide: an unregistered apiary is unlawful in California, and your registration is confidential
California requires apiary registration with your county agricultural commissioner, hobbyist and commercial alike, filed through BeeWhere. This is not paperwork you can skip: Food and Agricultural Code § 29045 makes it unlawful to maintain any apiary that is not registered. Register on 1 January each year, or within 30 days after, and within 30 days of bringing bees into the state or taking over an apiary (§§ 29040, 29042). Each registration runs until the following 1 January.
Your registration is confidential. § 29041 puts it outside the Public Records Act and makes it privileged, so it cannot be disclosed to any person or agency other than the department and your county department of agriculture. The one exception is that apiary locations are shared with pesticide applicators, which is the whole point of the system: it is how you get told before a field near you is sprayed.
Registering is what gives you a remedy. Under § 29047 you can only sue for damage to your bees from a pest control operation if you registered and identified your apiary. Under § 29048 an applicator can sue you for losses caused by your failure to register or to request notification.
Fees are set by a schedule under § 29044, which caps the annual registration fee at $250. The 2026 schedule bands it by colony count: 1 to 9 hives $10, 10 to 50 hives $100, 51 or more $250, due 1 January with late fees from 30 January. ⚠ A county board of supervisors may waive the fee entirely for a hobbyist not in the business of beekeeping who keeps nine or fewer colonies, so what you pay at that size depends on your county and can change from year to year.
If your apiary is anywhere other than your own home, § 29046 requires a sign on the entrance side or stencilled on the hive, in dark letters at least one inch high on a contrasting background, giving your name, address and telephone number. Where your city or county has its own identification ordinance, you follow that one instead, which is why the local rules below so often repeat the same wording. Apiaries on someone else's private land need the owner's approval on demand, and on public land an apiary without consent is a public nuisance that can be seized and forfeited.
You must register in every county you keep bees in, but you pay only once a year. Hives that move must be reported within 72 hours, and colonies brought in seasonally for pollination count too. Local city and county rules below are in addition to all of this. Read the 2026 update › or the CDFA index of the bee laws ›
Butte, California
Butte County sets no rules on keeping bees, but it runs an acarine mite quarantine: bees may not be shipped in from other California counties without certification.
Hive limit: No hive limit. The county regulates movement of bees, not their keeping.
Note: Read in full in 2026. The card said there were no county ordinances for apiaries, which is true of KEEPING bees and hid the rule that actually binds. Chapter 39 is a quarantine against the acarine mite: you may not ship bees into Butte County from another California county without certification and a per-hive sticker. If you keep bees here you are unaffected; if you move colonies in, this is the provision that governs. Fees are set at § 39-9. The ordinances date from 1986 and 1987, so confirm current practice with the county agricultural commissioner.
- Except as provided in § 39-6, shipping bees into Butte County from other counties in California is prohibited. 39-4
- The purpose is a quarantine: the board of supervisors found the acarine mite is not known to occur in Butte County and would harm the apiary industry if established. 39-3
- Hives sampled under § 39-6 and found free of acarine mite must carry an approved sticker on each hive, or other certification from the inspecting county acceptable to the commissioner. 39-8
Biggs, Butte County, California
Beekeeping is prohibited. The code bars possessing or keeping bees of the genus Apis anywhere in the city, with no exception stated in the section.
Hive limit: Beekeeping is prohibited outright.
Note: Read against the current Biggs Municipal Code in August 2026 and confirmed. This resource does not reproduce eCode360 text, so the wording above is ours — open the link for the code's own words, which are what govern.
Bees, Biggs Municipal Code ›Chico, Butte County, California
The keeping of honey bees is permitted in the RS and R1 zoning districts as a form of small animal keeping. See ordinance for further regulations.
Municipal code on American Legal ›Gridley, Butte County, California
Bees. No person shall possess or keep any bees (or any insects of the genus apis).
Gridley ›Oroville, Butte County, California
Two hives maximum, allowed only in the UR and RR/RA districts, at least 150 ft from any occupied building on an abutting parcel. Africanized bees are prohibited.
Hive limit: One hive per 20,000 sq ft of available site area, to a maximum of two, and only in the UR-10, UR-5, RA, RR-1, RR-20 and RR-10 districts.
Note: The published figures were right, but the allowance is zoned: hives are permitted in the UR-10, UR-5, RA, RR-1, RR-20 and RR-10 districts, not in residential districts generally. Two details worth checking against your parcel: the 150 ft is measured to an occupied building on an ABUTTING parcel, and "available site area" is cumulative, so keeping other livestock raises the area needed for the hives. Oroville prohibits Africanized bees twice over, once in the hive allowance and again in the dangerous-animal chapter. FFA and 4-H activities are exempt from these limits.
- In the UR-10, UR-5, RA, RR-1, RR-20 and RR-10 districts, one hive of honeybees may be kept for each 20,000 square feet of available site area, up to a maximum of two hives, and aggressive types of bees such as Africanized honeybees shall not be kept. 17.16.120(D)(3)(b)
- Bee hives must be located at least 150 feet from any occupied building on an abutting parcel. 17.16.120(F)(2)
- Available site area excludes ground covered by structures not used to house animals, and where two or more animals are kept on one site the required area for each is added together. 17.16.120(C)(4)
- Animals venomous to human beings are inherently dangerous and unlawful to keep, a definition that excludes domesticated honey-producing bees but expressly includes Africanized bees. 6.16.010, 6.16.020
- Commercial animal keeping requires a use permit with conditions managing manure, odor, noise, dust, flies and drainage. 17.16.120(E)(3)
Paradise, Butte County, California
Must have permit from Butte County Agricultural Commissioner. Minimum lot requirement: 43,560 sq.ft. See ordinance for further regulations.
- All beekeepers subject to the requirements of this Chapter shall maintain an adequate supply of water for their bees. 17.35.300
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