San Bernardino County Beekeeping Regulations

Registration Required. See County Ordinance for further requirements such as water supply.

See "7.04.120 Animal Limitations" for Zoning permission tables.

Beehives limited to 1 hive per 13,500 sq ft in Zones R-VLD, R-A, and R-LD with additional requirements.

Hive limit: A maximum of eight bee hives per two and one-half acres is allowed.

• Bee hives and their water source shall be placed a minimum of 100 ft. from any property line and a minimum of 400 ft. from any street, road or highway, any public school, park, established bus or transportation stop or from any dwelling or place of human habitation other than that occupied by the owner or caretaker of the apiary; 2. 15.01.125

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.

The city adopts San Bernardino County’s apiary regulations in their entirety and sets no separate rules of its own.

Hive limit: Set by the county, not the city.

Note: Read San Bernardino County’s card, not this one: in 2020 the city repealed its own fourteen-section apiary chapter and replaced it with a single sentence adopting the county code entire. One practical consequence is that Big Bear Lake has no independent rules to drift from the county’s, so if the county amends its apiary chapter the city follows automatically and without any local notice.

• Title 3, Division 2, Chapter 9 of the San Bernardino County Code regarding apiaries is adopted by reference in its entirety. The city clerk keeps a copy of the adopted county provisions. 6.12.010

The only mention of beekeeping in the code is in the home occupation standards, where it appears among the uses not allowed as a home occupation. No provision permitting or prohibiting beekeeping generally was found.

Hive limit: No hive count found anywhere in the code.

Note: Chino is a genuine gap rather than a clear answer, and it is better to say so than to guess. The only place bees appear anywhere in the city code is the home occupation section, which lists beekeeping among the things you may not run as a business from your home. That settles one narrow question and leaves the bigger one open, because keeping a few hives for yourself is not a home occupation and would not be caught by that provision. We searched the rest of the code and found nothing that permits beekeeping and nothing that prohibits it. So the position is that Chino has not addressed hobby beekeeping in writing, which means the answer will come from the planning counter rather than the code. Ask them, ask in writing, and keep the reply, because an unwritten position can change with the person answering the phone.

• Bee keeping is named in the home occupation standards among the uses that may not be conducted as a home occupation. 20.21.040

Bees may only be kept intentionally on a property of at least ten acres, and at least 500 feet from any residence. San Bernardino County Chapter 9, Apiaries, is expressly kept in force inside the city on top of that.

Hive limit: No hive count is set. The ten-acre minimum lot size is what limits keeping in practice.

Note: Chino Hills does not use the word ban, but for almost every property in the city the effect is the same. Bees may only be kept intentionally on a lot of at least ten acres, and even then they must sit at least 500 feet from any residence. Ordinary residential lots here are a fraction of an acre, so unless you are on genuinely rural acreage the answer is no. If you do have the land, note that you are subject to two sets of rules at once: the city expressly keeps the San Bernardino County apiary chapter alive inside city limits, so read the county card as a live requirement rather than as background. One detail is worth knowing if a swarm moves in uninvited: the prohibition is on maintaining bees intentionally, so an unmanaged colony is not automatically your violation, though you should still call the city. If the city does find prohibited bees, the remedy it names is relocating them outside Chino Hills and giving the officer the address, and giving a false address is itself an offence.

• It is prohibited to intentionally maintain bees on any property within the city which is less than ten acres. Such bees must be maintained at least 500 feet from any residence. 6.16.010(D)
• The owner or custodian of a prohibited animal, bees included, must relocate it outside the city and give the enforcing officer a relocation address outside the city limits, or state the intended disposition. 6.16.010(G)
• Giving the enforcing officer false information about a relocation address or disposition is an infraction under section 1.36.010 et seq. 6.16.010(H)
• Ordinances 91-01 and 92-02 adopted the San Bernardino County Code by reference. Chapter 9, Apiaries, of Title 3 of the county code, sections 32.0901 to 32.0917, is not repealed and remains in full force and effect within the city. 6.24.050

Keeping bees or apiaries within 1,000 feet of an inhabited dwelling is a declared public nuisance. There is no permit, no hive limit and no permissive provision anywhere else in the code.

Hive limit: No hive count is set. The 1,000 ft separation from inhabited dwellings is the binding constraint.

Note: Colton does not prohibit beekeeping in terms, but it declares it a public nuisance to keep bees anywhere in the city within a thousand feet of an inhabited dwelling. Colton is about sixteen square miles and built out, so on most parcels there is no point far enough from a home to satisfy that, and you should treat the city as closed to backyard hives unless you have measured a specific site and can show it clears a thousand feet in every direction. Two things follow from the rule being written as a nuisance rather than as a crime. It is enforced through property-maintenance abatement, which in practice means a neighbour complains. And there is no permit process to apply for, because the code offers no way to be permitted. We checked the two places a permission could have hidden: the zoning chapter on animals covers fowl and livestock and never mentions bees, and the code definition of agriculture lists farming, horticulture, floriculture and viticulture without apiculture, so bees are not allowed in through the agricultural use class either. Register with the San Bernardino County Agricultural Commissioner as state law requires, and read the county card, whose apiary chapter is the one that governs unincorporated land nearby.

• Keeping or maintaining apiaries or bees at any place within the corporate limits of the city and within one thousand feet of an inhabited dwelling is declared to be a public nuisance. 8.04.030(Q)

In the R-E residential estate district an apiary needs a site of at least one acre and is limited to one hive per 10,000 square feet. In the public facilities and open space districts the limit is ten hives per acre.

Hive limit: The density differs by district: roughly four hives an acre in residential estate, ten an acre in open space. Both are densities rather than flat caps, so the size of your site sets your number.

Note: Fontana sets your hive number by the size of your land rather than by a flat cap, and the density it allows depends on which district you are in. In the R-E residential estate district you need at least one acre before an apiary is permitted at all, and then you may have one hive for every 10,000 square feet, which works out at about four hives on a one acre site. In the public facilities and open space districts the allowance is more generous at ten hives per acre. Those two figures look inconsistent side by side but they are not: the city is simply allowing bees more densely where there are no houses and less densely where people live, which is a reasonable way to write it. The practical consequence for most residents is the one acre threshold in R-E, so check your parcel size and your district before anything else. Neither provision sets setbacks for hives, so ask the city whether any general animal keeping setbacks apply to you.

• An apiary is permitted in the R-E district with a minimum site area of one acre and a maximum of one hive per 10,000 square feet. 30-432
• Bees (apiary) are permitted at ten hives per acre, in a table that also sets densities for aviaries, livestock, poultry, rabbits and swine. 30-611

Apiaries are a conditionally permitted use in the AG-2 agricultural overlay district, with no hive kept closer than 200 feet to any dwelling other than the property owner's.

Hive limit: No hive count is set. The controls are the conditional use permit and the 200 foot separation from other people's dwellings.

Note: Grand Terrace allows apiaries in its AG-2 agricultural overlay district, and there are two things you need rather than one. The first is the distance: no hive within 200 feet of any dwelling except your own. That is a real constraint but a fair one, and note carefully what it is measured from. It is dwellings, not property lines and not streets, so a hive can sit near your boundary as long as it is far enough from the neighbour's house. Several California cities write the same idea as a distance from every property line and street, which makes it impossible on any normal parcel; this version stays achievable. The second thing is that this is a conditionally permitted use, which means a conditional use permit with an application, a fee and a decision the city can attach conditions to. Do that before you buy bees. An older compilation recorded 500 feet for Grand Terrace; the current code says 200, and that earlier figure is not supported by the text.

• Apiaries are a conditionally permitted use, provided that no hives or boxes housing bees are kept closer than 200 feet from any dwelling other than that occupied by the property owner. 18.56.030

Apiaries are not permitted in the city, but there are execeptions. A doctor can prescribe a single hive to be kept; 3 or fewer hives allowed on agriculturally zoned land with other requirements. Kept bees known to be Africanized are declared a public nuisance.

• A permanent source of fresh water shall be provided within twenty-five (25) feet of any hive. 6.12.080
• Bees shall be considered a public nuisance when they interfere with the normal use of private or public property or have been involved in a multiple stinging incident of five or more stings to an animal or person. 6.12.080

Hives must be at least 400 feet from any street, road, highway, public school, park or occupied dwelling other than the owner’s or caretaker’s.

Hive limit: No hive count is set. The 400 ft separation is what governs.

Note: Highland applies a single 400 foot separation to almost everything that matters: streets, roads and highways, public schools, parks, and any occupied dwelling that is not yours or your caretaker’s. On a normal city lot the distance to the street alone will defeat it, so this is a rule for larger holdings. There is no hive count and no permit named, so if you have the land the distance is the whole test. Register with the San Bernardino County Agricultural Commissioner as state law requires.

• Hives or boxes must be placed a minimum of 400 feet from any street, road, highway, public school or park, or any occupied dwelling except that of the owner or caretaker of the apiary. 16.44.040

An apiary is a defined use, permitted in one zoning district subject to a note and not listed in the others.

Hive limit: No hive count or setback is attached to the use in the table.

Note: Loma Linda treats an apiary as a defined land use and permits it in one zoning district, with a note attached that sets further conditions. We could not reliably record which district or what the note requires, because the use table’s columns do not survive the way the code is published and reading a mark by position risks giving you the wrong answer. Ask the planning counter whether apiaries are permitted in your district and what note 1 requires. Register with the San Bernardino County Agricultural Commissioner regardless.

• "Apiary" means a place where bees are kept, a collection of beehives. The definition of agriculture separately covers the raising of livestock, bees, furbearing animals or poultry and the practices performed on a farm incidental to farming operations. 17.02.212
• The land use table lists Apiary as permitted in one district, subject to a note, and does not list it for the others. 17.44.020

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.

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

Note: Searched in 2026 and no beekeeping provision was found: no hive count, no setback, no permit and no prohibition. Be aware that this one rests on a single search rather than the two independent checks we prefer. Needles publishes its code on a platform that only serves pages inside a browsing session, so we could not read the code end to end to confirm the result, and the search was run through the site's own text search using the full beekeeping vocabulary. Two things follow. Ask the city clerk directly to confirm there is no bee or apiary provision before you invest in equipment, and read the San Bernardino County card as though it binds you, because it may: Chino Hills, in this same county, expressly keeps the county apiary chapter in force inside its own city limits, and we cannot tell from outside whether Needles does the same. California still requires apiary registration with the San Bernardino County Agricultural Commissioner wherever your hives sit.

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

Note: A 2026 search of this jurisdiction's full American Legal 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.

Two bee colonies are permitted, and only in the VL zone. Bees are not listed for any other district.

Hive limit: Two bee colonies, VL zone only.

Note: Rancho Cucamonga allows two bee colonies and only in the VL zone. If your parcel carries any other zoning, bees are simply not among the animals the table permits, so the zoning designation settles the question before anything else. Check it first. Where bees are allowed there is no setback or permit written into the table, and the chapter’s general aim is that animal keeping should not affect the neighbours through noise, odour or infestation.

• The animal keeping table permits bee colonies in the VL zone only, to a maximum of two. 17.88.020
• The chapter exists to ensure that keeping domestic pets, livestock animals and bees does not create an adverse impact on adjacent properties by reason of dust, fumes, noise, odour, insect or vermin infestation or visual blight, and to maintain animal welfare and public health and safety. 17.88.010

Permit required. Allowed only between March 15th and May 20th, unless an apiary of 10 or less colonies. See municipal code for other requirements.

Keeping bees is a permitted use in the agricultural zone provided no hive is nearer than 200 feet to any dwelling other than the owner's. A separate fire permit is needed to use a smoker in a hazardous fire area.

Hive limit: No hive count is set. The control is the 200 foot separation from dwellings other than your own.

Note: Rialto permits beekeeping in its agricultural zone with one distance rule: no hive within 200 feet of a dwelling other than your own. That is measured from houses rather than from property lines, which is the sensible way to write it, and it is achievable on a reasonably sized parcel. There is no hive count. The provision that catches people out is somewhere else entirely. Rialto has added a bee keeping section to its adopted fire code, and it says that if you are in a hazardous fire area you may not use lighted or smouldering material to smoke bees without an operational permit from the Fire Code Official. That covers an ordinary smoker on an ordinary inspection. It lives in the buildings and construction title, so a search of the zoning and animal chapters will never find it, and this is the fourth California jurisdiction we have found putting a beekeeping duty in the fire code. If any part of your property is in a hazardous fire area, ring the fire department before your first inspection of the season.

• The keeping of bees is a permitted use provided that no hive or box where bees are kept is nearer than two hundred feet to any dwelling other than the dwelling of the owner of such bees. 18.08.020
• Lighted and smouldering materials may not be used in connection with smoking bees in or upon hazardous fire areas unless an operational permit has been issued by the Fire Code Official. 15.28.070, Fire Code § 105.5.58

A 1909 ordinance, still in force, making it unlawful to keep more than two stands or swarms of bees at any one place in the city. The same sentence also says it is unlawful to keep or maintain an apiary, and the two clauses can be read as one rule or as two, so ask the city before assuming two hives are safe.

Hive limit: Two stands or swarms on the most common reading, which is also how the city's own section heading describes it. But § 8.03.020 opens by making it unlawful to keep or maintain an apiary, and if that clause stands on its own it bars beekeeping at any size. This is unresolved and the city is the place to resolve it.

Note: Read § 8.03.020 slowly, because one sentence decides this and it can be read two ways. It says it is unlawful to keep or maintain an apiary, or keep or maintain more than two stands or swarms of bees, at any one place within the city. If those two clauses describe a single rule, the answer is that two colonies are lawful and a third is not. That is how the city itself labels the section, since both the heading and the chapter index read Maintenance of more than two swarms unlawful, and it fits § 8.03.010, whose recital locates the danger specifically in bees kept in larger numbers than two stands or swarms. It also fits the penalty: § 8.03.030 makes a violation an infraction, and the city revisited that as recently as 1985, which is a light penalty for a total prohibition. If instead the two clauses are independent, then keeping an apiary is unlawful whatever its size, and the second clause exists to catch a householder who would argue that two hives are not an apiary. That reading has something going for it too, because on the first reading the words keep or maintain an apiary do no work at all. The ordinance dates from 13 September 1909 and the word apiary may well have carried a narrower sense then, meaning a bee yard or an establishment rather than any hive at all. We are not going to guess between those on your behalf. Ring the city and ask whether two colonies at a residence are permitted, and get the answer in writing if you can, because this is the kind of question a code enforcement officer will answer from the heading rather than the sentence. Whatever the city says, California law applies on top: an unregistered apiary is unlawful statewide, and this chapter points at that law itself.

• It is unlawful to keep or maintain more than two stands or swarms of bees at any one place within the city. § 8.03.020
• The same sentence also makes it unlawful to keep or maintain an apiary. Whether that is a separate prohibition on beekeeping at any size, or simply another way of describing the same two-swarm rule, is not resolved by the text. Ask the city before relying on either reading. § 8.03.020
• Maintaining apiaries and keeping bees in larger numbers than two stands or swarms at any one place is declared a public nuisance. § 8.03.010
• A violation of the chapter is an infraction, punishable under § 1.12.010. § 8.03.030
• The chapter carries a statutory reference to the state apiary law at Cal. Food and Agricultural Code §§ 29000 et seq., which requires registration with the county agricultural commissioner. Ch. 8.03, statutory reference

Beekeeping, hobby or commercial, is expressly listed among the animals prohibited in the city. There is no exception and no permit route.

Hive limit: Not applicable. Beekeeping is prohibited outright rather than limited.

Note: Twentynine Palms does not allow beekeeping. The city keeps a list of prohibited animals and beekeeping is on it, named directly, covering hobby and commercial alike. There is no permit to apply for, no hive count that would make it lawful, and no exception written in. Two of the other entries on that list, pigs and wild animals, are allowed if you comply with other sections of the chapter, but beekeeping has no such escape, so the prohibition is absolute on the face of the code. It is also recent. The provision was adopted by Ordinance 303 in February 2023, which means this is a current decision by the city rather than an old rule left on the books, and that matters if you are thinking of asking them to reconsider: you would be asking them to revisit something they wrote deliberately and not long ago. If you want to keep bees in this area, the practical route is to look at whether your land is actually within the city limits, because unincorporated San Bernardino County is governed separately, and to take the question to the city directly if you want to make the case for a change. Our earlier card said Twentynine Palms had no beekeeping rules at all, which was exactly wrong, and we are sorry if it sent anyone in the wrong direction.

• Beekeeping, hobby or commercial, is listed among the animals prohibited by the city, alongside pigs, snakes over six feet, wild animals, poisonous or venomous animals and piranha fish. 19.102.090(B)(6)
• Other entries in the same list carry exceptions, allowing pigs and wild animals where they conform to §§ 19.102.100 and 19.102.080.B. No such exception is attached to beekeeping. 19.102.090(B)(1), (3)
• The section also incorporates the state list of prohibited animals and separately prohibits poisonous or venomous animals, so the beekeeping entry is an independent prohibition rather than a consequence of the venomous animal rule. 19.102.090(A), (B)(4), (B)(7)

Beekeeping is not permitted in the commercial, industrial or mixed-use zones. It is allowed in the special purpose zones, in one by right and in another with an administrative use permit.

Hive limit: No hive count or setback is attached to the use in the tables.

Note: Upland decides beekeeping by zoning district, and in the commercial, industrial and mixed-use zones the answer is no. Bees are allowed in the special purpose zones, in one district by right and in another with an administrative use permit. We could not reliably record which districts those are, because the tables’ column headings do not survive the way the code is published, and we did not find beekeeping listed in a residential zone table at all. So the essential first step here is to ask the planning counter which district your parcel is in and whether beekeeping is listed for it.

• Beekeeping is marked as not allowed in every column of the commercial, industrial and mixed-use zone tables. Use tables
• Beekeeping is permitted in one special purpose district and allowed subject to an administrative use permit in another. Use table

Keeping or maintaining snakes or other reptiles, or bees or other insects within the city limits, is a nuisance.

Apiaries must be 500 feet from the nearest inhabited dwelling unless the occupant permits closer, 100 feet from public roads and 200 feet from freeways, with fresh water always available.

Hive limit: No hive count is set. The separations are what govern.

Note: Yucaipa asks for 500 feet between your hives and the nearest inhabited house, which sounds prohibitive until you read the rest of the sentence: you may site them closer if you get permission from whoever lives there. Add 100 feet from the travelled part of any public road, 200 feet from a freeway, and fresh water available at all times. Near a school yard or anywhere people gather you must put barriers between the hives and the people, and the code sets the aim rather than a height, so anything that genuinely lifts the flight path will do. Definitions come from the California Agricultural Code, so the state scheme and your county registration sit behind all of this.

• The council found that the unregulated and improper keeping of bees and apiaries throughout the city had in some instances become a nuisance and a hazard to the safety of landowners, road users and the public. 6.18.010
• Words and phrases not defined in the chapter take the meaning given them by the California Agricultural Code and the laws of the state pertaining to bees and the beekeeping industry. 6.18.015
• All apiaries must be kept at least 100 feet from the travelled portion of all public roads other than freeways, unless natural barriers prevent bees causing a nuisance or hazard to road users, and at least 200 feet from all freeways. 6.18.025(A)
• All apiaries must be at least 500 feet from the nearest house or building inhabited as a dwelling, and may only be closer if the owner of the apiary first obtains permission from the occupant or person using that building as a dwelling. 6.18.025(B)
• Apiaries near school yards or places where people congregate must be located and maintained behind barriers, natural or otherwise, to cause bees to fly at a high altitude over such places. 6.18.025(C)
• Before locating or maintaining an apiary a plentiful supply of fresh water must be furnished and kept available at all times, unless the apiary is sited so that the nearest water is an isolated stream or reservoir available to the bees. 6.18.030

In the City of Yucca Valley, there are no municipal codes set in place for the ownership of apiaries.