Lassen County Beekeeping Regulations
Local beekeeping rules for Lassen County and 1 city: 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 ›
Lassen, California
Lassen sets no rules on keeping bees. It runs a bee inspection and quarantine regime: 24 hours' notice to the county bee inspector before bringing any bees in, inspection at your expense, labelled hives, and quarantine or destruction if disease is found.
Hive limit: No hive limit and no setback. Lassen regulates the movement and health of bees, not where you keep them.
Note: Read in full in 2026. Lassen County sets no limit on hive numbers and no setback — nothing about where you may keep bees. What it has is a bee inspection and quarantine code, originally Ordinance 100 of 1914 and still in force, re-adopted as recently as 2022. The duties fall on anyone bringing bees INTO the county: notice to the county bee inspector within 24 hours of arrival, no selling or moving the bees until that notice is given, inspection at your own expense, and a label on every box naming the owner and the place of origin. If disease is found the colonies must leave within 48 hours or be destroyed, and the inspector can quarantine for up to 60 days. If you truck colonies for pollination this is the provision that affects you, and it is easy to miss because it looks nothing like a beekeeping ordinance. The card also cited Chapter 7.26 Appendix B for annual registration; that chapter has not been read, so it is not restated here. California separately requires apiary registration with the county agricultural commissioner.
- Nobody may bring bees or bee-hives containing bee products into Lassen County from any district, county, state or foreign country without giving notice to the bee inspector within 24 hours of arrival. The bees may not be sold, offered for sale, given away or moved on until that notice is given. 8.20.010
- Notice may be given in person or by post to the county bee inspector, and must state the consignor and consignee, where the bees came from, where they are going or being kept, and the number of hives, colonies and parcels. 8.20.030
- The inspector inspects as soon as possible and THE OWNER PAYS all costs of inspection. Every box, hive or parcel must carry a distinct mark or label showing the owner, agent or shipper and the place it was shipped from. 8.20.020, 8.20.060
- Anything found infested or infected with a disease injurious to bees must leave the county within 48 hours at the owner's expense, or be destroyed. The owner chooses which. 8.20.040
- The bee inspector may quarantine bees, hives or bee products in the county for up to 60 days for further inspection or disinfection. On learning that American foulbrood, European foulbrood, black brood, paralysis or any other contagious bee disease exists elsewhere, the inspector must declare a strict quarantine against importation, and may detain suspect shipments until satisfied they are clean. 8.20.050, 8.20.070
Susanville, Lassen County, California
Susanville sets no beekeeping standards. Its nuisance list covers bees kept in violation of another provision of the code, which by itself neither permits nor forbids keeping them.
Note: Read in full in 2026. The card said beekeeping "could be considered a nuisance", which warns without telling you anything you can act on. What § 8.52.030(L) actually does is make a nuisance of bees kept "for any purpose AND in violation of this code or any other code adopted by this city" — so it bites only where some other provision is already broken, and standing alone it neither permits nor prohibits bees. Chapter 8.52 is a property maintenance chapter and contains no beekeeping standard at all: no hive count, no setback, no permit. Two practical points. An excessive accumulation of animal waste or an animal carcass is a nuisance in its own right, which would reach a neglected or dead-out hive. And Lassen COUNTY separately runs a bee inspection and quarantine regime governing bees brought into the county, so check that card too if you are moving colonies.
- It is a public nuisance to keep, breed or maintain animals, livestock, poultry, insects or bees for any purpose AND in violation of this code or any other code adopted by the city. The rule is conditional on breaching some other provision and sets no standard of its own. 8.52.030(L)
- Separately, an excessive accumulation of animal waste, or the presence of an animal carcass, is itself a nuisance — which would reach a neglected or dead-out apiary. 8.52.030(E)(8)
- The city planner, building official, fire chief, engineer or a designated enforcement officer may declare a nuisance and abate it under Chapter 8.32, or issue an administrative citation under Chapter 8.40. 8.52.040
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