How we verify these pages

These pages tell people whether they can legally keep bees where they live. That is worth getting right, and worth being open about when we do not. This page explains what each entry is read against, what the dates mean, the mistakes we have found in our own data, and how to tell us about one.

What an entry is

Every entry is a summary of one jurisdiction's own published code, written after reading that code. It is not a summary of somebody else's summary. Where an entry states a rule, it names the section that rule comes from, and links to the code so you can read the words yourself. The linked code is always the authority; our card is a finding aid.

Of 512 California jurisdictions, 510 have been read against the live code and carry a date, 401 cite a specific code section, 126 record that no local beekeeping rule exists, and 43 record a prohibition.

What "re-checked" means

A blue re-checked badge means the jurisdiction's current published code was opened and read in that month, and the card rewritten from it. An amber card has not yet had that treatment.

Reading is done two ways, and both end at the same place: the actual text of the section. Most entries were read by a person. The rest were extracted directly from a code platform's own text of the section, which for the mechanical question of what a section says is at least as reliable as a person skimming. What neither means is that a lawyer has reviewed it.

What we do not do

• We do not give legal advice. If money or a dispute rides on the answer, confirm it with the city or county in writing.
• We do not paraphrase a rule we could not find the text of. If we could not reach a code, the card says so rather than guessing.
• We do not publish a prohibition without a person reading it first. That rule exists because it kept catching errors — see below.

The mistakes we look for, because we have made them

Most of what makes this work hard is not finding the rule. It is the ways a rule can be misread. Each of these is a real error we found and corrected in our own data:

• A heading is never the rule. One city has a section headed "Apiaries prohibited" that contains no prohibition at all, only a cross-reference. Another has a section headed "Beekeeping permitted when" that is, in fact, a prohibition.
• A ban that points elsewhere has to be chased. Eight entries we had published as prohibitions turned out not to be, once the section they referred to was actually read. Every one of those errors was in the same direction: too restrictive.
• A rule can exist without the word "bee" near it. Some cities regulate beekeeping only through a row in a zoning use table, or by folding it into a defined class like "agriculture" or "animal husbandry". A keyword search finds nothing and the absence is false.
• An older rule can be superseded and left in place. One city's 1964 nuisance section still bans apiaries citywide while its current zoning code permits them in a residential zone. The later, more specific provision governs.
• The document can be the wrong year. One code we read was four years out of date: the file was still hosted, still returned normally, still carried the right city's name. Now we look for a newer edition before reading.
• The real rules can sit outside the code. Several cities make a beekeeping association's best practices binding by council resolution, and one does not even name the resolution. The code cannot tell you the hive limit because the hive limit is not in it.
• A permission can be impossible. One city lists apiaries as permitted on lots of two and a half acres, then requires every hive to be 400 feet from any property boundary — which needs about fifteen acres. The permission is real and unusable.

Where the rules are hard to reach

Not every jurisdiction publishes its code in a way anyone can read. Some sit behind platforms that do not permit bulk reading. Some publish through a document system where no section has a stable address. Some cite an internal section that no longer exists. One city's own website is currently flagged as compromised, so we will not link to it and neither should you. Where we could not reach a code, the card says so plainly instead of implying an absence of rules.

Tell us when we are wrong

If a rule has changed, or your city tells you something different from what you read here, we want to know. Send the section number or a link and we will read it and correct the entry. Corrections are the cheapest quality mechanism we have.

Email a correction › Browse California regulations ›

Who maintains this

ColonyTrack is built by Bogdan, a beekeeper in Santa Barbara, California, working toward UC Davis Master Beekeeper certification. The regulations dataset began from a jurisdiction list published by the California Master Beekeeper Program at UC Davis, and every entry in it has since been re-read against the jurisdiction's own code. More about ColonyTrack ›