Modoc County Beekeeping Regulations
Local beekeeping rules for Modoc 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 ›
Modoc, California
(18.86.040 - Minimum lot size) […]bees shall not be allowed in the RH zone. Bees defined as an Agricultural operation.
- Registered apiary sites after January 1, 2024, which are closer than one and one-half miles must be agreed to in writing by the beekeepers and the commissioner. 6.06.080
- To prevent a public nuisance, beekeepers are encouraged to implement best management practices (BMPs) for bee management. 6.06.080
- BMPs include placement of a number of hives per yard proportionate to available natural forage and water that would facilitate good bee health, would not negatively affect neighboring bee hives or the colony's production, or cause a public nuisance. 6.06.080
- The three-hundred-foot apiary limitation does not apply if the person placing or keeping the apiary has written permission from the affected resident to waive the distance requirement. 4. 6.06.070
- No person shall maintain an apiary in any manner that prevents or hinders access to the inside of any hive for inspection by an authorized apiary inspector. 6.06.070
- Every person owning an apiary located on premises other than where they reside shall clearly identify it by displaying a sign prominently at the entrance to the apiary. 6.06.050
- No person shall transport bees on the public highway or roads in such a manner as to create a public nuisance. 6.06.110
- No person shall willingly and knowingly keep or breed Africanized honey bees or overly defensive bees. 6.06.130
Alturas, Modoc County, California
One apiary of four or fewer hives is allowed by right in every zone, provided no hive sits within 25 feet of a property line without the written consent of the adjacent resident. More than four hives is available by administrative permit.
Hive limit: Four hives by right in all zones. Above four, an administrative permit is available where all contiguous property owners agree.
Note: Alturas has one of the most sensible beekeeping rules in California and it is worth reading if you are anywhere in the state, because it shows what a workable ordinance looks like. Four hives or fewer are allowed by right in every zone in the city. Not by permit, not by hearing, by right. The only siting condition is that no hive sits within 25 feet of a property line, and even that can be waived if your adjacent neighbour gives you written consent. If you live in a flat or a multi-unit building, everyone living on the site needs to agree to where the apiary goes, which is fair enough. If you want more than four hives, there is an administrative permit for that, granted where all the property owners next to you agree. What makes this rule good is that it protects neighbours by asking them rather than by imposing a distance nobody can achieve, and it puts the decision with the people actually affected. The code even says out loud that properly placed apiaries have been shown to be compatible with urban development, which is a rare thing for a municipal code to commit to in writing.
- One apiary consisting of four or fewer hives is allowed by right in all zones, as long as no apiary is located within 25 feet of any property line without the written consent of the adjacent resident, if any. 28.31.040(B)
- In the case of multi-unit residential uses, all residents on site must also agree to the location of the apiary. 28.31.040(B)
- Apiaries in excess of four hives may be allowed by administrative permit where all contiguous property owners agree to their placement. 28.31.040(B)
- The code describes honey bees as living in a colony called a hive, with one or more hives called an apiary, and states that when properly placed apiaries have been shown to be compatible with urban development. 28.31.030
510 of 512 California entries have been read against the jurisdiction’s live code and carry a re-checked date. How we verify these pages, and the mistakes we look for ›
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