Sacramento County Beekeeping Regulations

Bees are expressly excluded from the county’s venomous-animal prohibition. No hive count, setback or permit is set.

Hive limit: No hive count or setback found in the county code.

Note: Sacramento County does not set beekeeping standards, and the one place bees appear in the code works in your favour: the definition of dangerous and venomous animals expressly excludes honey-producing bees, so the general prohibition on keeping venomous animals does not reach a hive. Two other California jurisdictions carry the same exclusion, which suggests it is drafted deliberately rather than by chance. Check the city card as well as this one if you are inside an incorporated city, and register with the county agricultural commissioner as state law requires.

• The definition of animals that may not be kept includes any species venomous to human beings, whether the venom is transmitted by bite, sting, touch or other means, expressly excepting honey-producing bees. 8.04.280

Urban beekeeping is allowed only on property that has not been declared a location where bee hives are potentially a hazard to public health and safety, in compliance with Subsection F.5

Elk Grove sets no beekeeping standards. Apiculture is named within the definition of an agricultural operation.

Hive limit: No hive count, setback or permit anywhere in the code.

Note: Elk Grove has no beekeeping chapter and sets no hive count, setback or permit. Bees appear only through the word apiculture inside the definition of an agricultural operation used by the right-to-farm provisions, which protects an established operation from later nuisance complaints rather than granting permission. Check with the city which zoning districts permit agricultural uses, and register with the Sacramento County Agricultural Commissioner as state law requires.

• An agricultural operation includes the production, cultivation, growing and harvesting of any agricultural commodity including timber, viticulture, apiculture or horticulture, together with the practices performed by a farmer or on a farm incidental to those operations. Agricultural activities definitions

Folsom has no beekeeping ordinance. The only place apiaries are named in the whole code is the fire code, which requires a firebreak to be cleared around them.

Hive limit: No hive count, setback or permit. There is no beekeeping ordinance to set one.

Note: Folsom does not have a beekeeping ordinance. A search of the whole code in 2026 turned up exactly one mention of apiaries, and it is not in the animals title or the zoning title where you would look for it. It is in the fire code, in the section about clearing weeds, brush and vegetative growth, and it requires a firebreak around the apiary. That is a genuine obligation and it is easy to miss entirely, so ring the fire department and ask how wide the firebreak has to be and what it is measured from before you decide where the hives go. We have not read that specification ourselves and are not going to guess at a number. Beyond the firebreak, there is no hive limit, no setback and no permit, because there is no ordinance to set them. That is not the same as being told yes, so it is still worth a call to the planning counter to confirm nothing in the zoning tables reaches beekeeping through a use class such as agriculture. Folsom is the sixth California jurisdiction we have found whose only beekeeping duty lives in a fire code, so if you keep bees anywhere in the state, searching the fire title is a habit worth having. California also requires apiary registration with the county agricultural commissioner.

• Apiaries are named in the clearance of weeds, brush and vegetative growth provisions and are required to have a firebreak. Confirm the required width with the fire department. Fire Code Section 320

No local beekeeping rule found in the municipal code. State registration with the county agricultural commissioner still applies.

Note: Searched against the live code in 2026 with no result, so this card no longer reads as unknown. Three caveats are worth carrying, each learned from a real California code this year. A code can regulate bees without naming them, by folding beekeeping into a defined use class such as "agriculture" or "animal husbandry" and then regulating that class in a zoning table. Vocabulary can hide a rule outright, "bee culture" being the most obscure term found so far. And obligations can sit outside the animals and zoning titles entirely, including apiary provisions in wildland-urban interface fire codes. Check Sacramento County’s own card as well as this one, since county and city rules differ and the county’s may be the one that binds you. California still requires apiary registration with the county agricultural commissioner.

No beekeeping provisions found in this code by a 2026 search.

Note: A 2026 search of this jurisdiction's full Municode code found no match for any beekeeping term (bees, beekeeping, apiary, apiculture, hive and related words). That is a search of the published code, not a lawyer's reading: a rule could still exist if it avoids all of those words, sits in a separate code not published here, or was adopted after the search. Confirm at the source before relying on it.

Beekeeping is an accessory use in all zones, with no application form and no permit. The chapter’s standards are advisory best practices rather than requirements.

Hive limit: No binding hive count. The chapter sets advisory best practices.

Note: Rancho Cordova is the most straightforward city in California to keep bees in. Beekeeping is an accessory use in all zones, there is no permit, and there is no application form to fill in. The chapter does set out standards for siting and managing hives, but it says in terms that they are advisory best practices rather than requirements, and it uses "should" rather than "shall" throughout. Follow them anyway, since they are sound and since a colony that becomes a genuine nuisance can still be dealt with under other law, but you do not need anyone’s permission to start.

• The purpose of the chapter is to provide for beekeeping as an accessory use in all zones within the city, while establishing advisory standards to minimise potential impacts on surrounding properties and persons. 8.12.010
• Beekeeping is an allowed use in most of the city’s residential zoning districts. No application form is required. The provisions of the chapter are intended to establish advisory information for best practices relating to keeping bees in the city. 8.12.030
• All beehives in the city should be located and maintained consistently with the standards set out in the section, which are expressed as guidance rather than as requirements. 8.12.040

Two beehives per parcel. § 9.44.330 makes it unlawful to permanently keep more than two on a single parcel anywhere in the city, unless the parcel is zoned A or A-OS or the use is a valid nonconforming one. Beekeeping itself is broadly allowed: the zoning title lists urban beekeeping as a permitted use across most districts, subject to that section.

Hive limit: Two per parcel under § 9.44.330. The cap lifts on land zoned A or A-OS, and on a use that is validly nonconforming. Note the wording is per PARCEL rather than per household.

Note: Sacramento is permissive about beekeeping and strict about the number, which is the reverse of how a blank card would have read. Urban beekeeping appears as a permitted use across most of the zoning districts in Title 17, each entry pointing at § 9.44.330, and the city puts it in the same family as market gardens and community gardens under the heading of urban agriculture. The rule itself is one sentence: it is unlawful to permanently keep, have or ranch more than two beehives on a single parcel of property within the city. Two things about that sentence repay attention. It is per parcel, not per person or per household, so splitting hives between two people at one address does not help. And the word is permanently, which is what makes a swarm trap or a short-term nuc different from a permanent apiary, though you should ask the city rather than rely on that reading. The cap does not apply if your parcel is zoned A or A-OS, the agricultural designations, or if your beekeeping is a valid nonconforming use predating the current code. There is no permit, no setback and no registration with the city. California still requires apiary registration with the Sacramento County agricultural commissioner whatever the city does, and § 9.44.330 closes by saying nothing in it authorises keeping hives in violation of any other applicable law.

• It is unlawful to permanently keep, have or ranch more than two beehives on a single parcel of property within the city. § 9.44.330
• The two hive limit does not apply where the parcel is zoned A or A-OS, or where the beekeeping is a valid nonconforming use under the Planning and Development Code. § 9.44.330
• Urban beekeeping is defined as having or ranching no more than two beehives on a single parcel, and is part of the definition of urban agriculture. § 17.108.220
• Urban beekeeping is listed as a permitted use across most zoning districts in Title 17, in each case expressly subject to § 9.44.330. Title 17, district permitted-use sections
• Nothing in § 9.44.330 authorises keeping hives in violation of any other applicable law. § 9.44.330