Tuolumne County Beekeeping Regulations
Local beekeeping rules for Tuolumne 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 ›
Tuolumne, California
Two hives per parcel outside the agricultural and residential estate districts, unlimited in the Agriculture District, with a five foot property line setback, a flyway rule, a two year requeening interval and a year round water source.
Hive limit: Two per parcel in most districts, more with a Minor Use Permit. No limit in the Agriculture District.
Note: Tuolumne County has one of the most sensible beekeeping rules in the state, and it is short enough to read in a couple of minutes. Outside the agricultural and residential estate districts you may keep two hives per parcel, and more if you get a Minor Use Permit. In the Agriculture District there is no limit. The siting rules are easy to meet: five feet from your property lines, entrances pointed away from or along the nearest boundary, and either a six foot screen the bees have to climb over before they leave your land, which may be a hedge rather than a fence, or the hive raised eight feet off the ground. What sets this chapter apart is that it also asks you to keep the bees properly. Give the colony room so it does not swarm, requeen at least every two years, keep water on your own property so the bees are not at a neighbour pool or hose bib, and store your kit sealed or indoors so it does not start robbing. One clause is worth knowing about because it is harder than it sounds: a colony that swarms is listed as a public nuisance. A swarm is how a healthy colony reproduces and even a well-run hive can throw one, so read that as the county telling you to manage actively, and if it happens, collect it promptly and talk to the county rather than hoping nobody noticed.
- A maximum of two hives per parcel, unless otherwise approved with a Minor Use Permit. There is no limit in the Agriculture District. 17.42.040(C)(1)
- Hives must be at least five feet from all property lines, and hive entrances must face away from or parallel to the nearest property lines. 17.42.040(C)(2)(a)-(b)
- Hives must either be screened so the bees must fly over a six foot barrier, which may be vegetative, before leaving the property, or be placed at least eight feet above the adjacent ground level. 17.42.040(C)(2)(c)
- Hives must be continually managed to provide adequate living space for their resident bees, to prevent swarming. 17.42.040(C)(3)(a)
- Hives must be requeened at least once every two years, to prevent swarming. 17.42.040(C)(3)(b)
- A water source for bees must be provided at all times on the property, to discourage bees visiting swimming pools, hose bibs and other water sources on adjacent property. 17.42.040(C)(3)(c)
- Hive maintenance materials and equipment must be stored in a sealed container, or inside a building or other bee-proof enclosure. 17.42.040(C)(3)(d)
- Bees or hives are a public nuisance under Chapter 17.104 if colonies show defensive or objectionable behaviour or interfere with normal use of neighbouring properties, if colonies swarm, if the bees or hives do not conform to the Code, or if hives become abandoned by their bees or by the owner. 17.42.040(C)(4)
- General animal keeping standards outside the Agricultural Districts: animals kept clean and sanitary and no threat to public health, no fouling of the air off the parcel by unpleasant odour, no nuisance to residents of adjacent parcels, and feed stored in rodent-proof containers. 17.42.040(A)
- All animal keeping uses are subject to the permit specified in the Article 2 use tables. 17.42.030
Sonora, Tuolumne County, California
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.
Municipal Code ›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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