San Francisco County Beekeeping Regulations
Local beekeeping rules for San Francisco County and 2 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 ›
San Francisco, California
Beekeeping is not restricted. The nuisance code expressly exempts honey bee harborages regulated under state law, bees are excluded from the dangerous-animal definition, and active hives count as qualifying evidence for the urban agriculture incentive programme.
Hive limit: No hive count, setback or permit is set anywhere in the code.
Note: San Francisco is among the easiest jurisdictions in the state for a beekeeper. There is no hive limit, no setback and no city permit anywhere in the code. The provision that matters is a single line in the health code: insect harborages are a public health nuisance, except harborages for honey bees regulated under state law. That wording is worth understanding, because unlike most California cities the exemption points at the state statute rather than at your registration paperwork, so it does not evaporate if a renewal slips. Register with the county agricultural commissioner all the same, since that is what the state scheme requires. Note also that active hives count as qualifying evidence of agricultural use under the city urban agriculture incentive programme, so bees may help a parcel qualify rather than hinder it.
- Noxious insect harborages and infestations are a prohibited public health nuisance, expressly except for harborages for honey-producing bees of the genus Apis regulated by California Food and Agricultural Code sections 29000 and following. Health Code 581(a)(8)
- The definition of a wild and potentially dangerous animal covers species venomous to human beings whether by bite, sting, touch or other means, except the honey-producing bee. Health Code 51
- Within 90 days of contract approval the Agricultural Commissioner inspects the site, looking for evidence of animal husbandry demonstrated by active bee hives, chicken coops or other animal husbandry practices. Admin Code 53A.7
San Francisco, San Francisco County, California
San Francisco (City) currently allows urban beekeeping without any specific permit or registration requirements. Section 581 of the San Francisco Health Code states, no person shall have upon any premises or real property owned, occupied or controlled by him or her any public nuisance except for harborage of honey-producing bees regulated by the CA Ag Code Sec 29000 et seq. which are determined not to be a nuisance under State law
San Francisco Municipal Code › SF Beekeepers Association guidance (not law) ›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 ›
Other counties: Alameda · Alpine · Amador · Butte · Calaveras · Colusa · Contra Costa · Del Norte · see all 58 ›