Maine Beekeeping Laws and Regulations

Beehives at an apiary, relevant to Maine beekeeping regulations — Justin and Kavita Bay, along with their two children Cy and Sujatha, own Rivulet Apiaries and Hindu Hillbilly Farms near Rivulet, Mont. NRCS worked with the Bays to combat future declines in honey bee populations by helping them to implement conservation practices that provide forage for honey bees while enhancing habitat for other pollinators and wildlife and improving the quality of water, air and soil. June 2017. Mineral County.

Maine maintains a public directory of nearly 300 volunteer swarm collectors, searchable by town, so anyone who finds a swarm on their property can find local help — a genuinely distinctive public-service feature most states don’t offer. That same Apiary Program, run by the Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry (DACF), also administers Maine’s annual beekeeper licensing requirement, disease inspection, and interstate import rules, all funded directly by the license fees beekeepers pay each year.

This guide covers Maine’s annual licensing requirement under Title 7, the rules for importing bees from other states, how disease inspection works, what state law actually says (and doesn’t say) about hive placement near neighbors, and the state’s public swarm-collector directory. Maine beekeeping is closely tied to the state’s wild blueberry industry, one of the largest in the country, which relies heavily on managed honey bee colonies trucked in each spring for pollination — a genuine reason DACF’s Apiary Program frames interstate bee movement as something to actively support, not merely tolerate, even while maintaining real disease-control standards.

Key Takeaways

Every person who owns honeybees in Maine must notify the commissioner annually of their colonies and location, and pay an annual license fee, both due by June 15.
License fees are dedicated revenue that funds apiary inspection and licensing directly — not general state revenue — and the state must publicize the annual requirement 14 to 30 days before the June 15 deadline.
Importing bees into Maine requires an Import Notification of Bees form, a health certificate from the state of origin, and the appropriate fee.
Maine state law doesn’t specify an exact property-line setback for hives — the state apiarist’s best-practice guidance (a 6-foot barrier if placed against a neighboring property, entrances facing your own land) is recommended practice, not a statutory requirement, though local ordinances may impose their own rules.
DACF maintains a public, searchable directory of close to 300 volunteer swarm collectors across Maine towns, a free public resource for anyone dealing with an unwanted swarm.

Annual Licensing Requirement
Importing Bees Into Maine
Disease Inspection
Hive Placement: Guidance, Not Statute
Local Municipal Ordinances
The Public Swarm Collector Directory
Frequently Asked Questions

Annual Licensing Requirement

Under Title 7, Section 2701 of the Maine Revised Statutes, every person who owns honeybees in Maine must annually notify the commissioner of the fact that they keep bees and where those bees are located, and must forward an annual license fee by June 15 of each year. Fees are established by rule rather than fixed directly in statute, and — notably — they accrue as dedicated revenue to the Division of Animal and Plant Health specifically to fund the cost of apiary inspection and licensing, rather than flowing into general state revenue. The statute also places an obligation on the state itself: the commissioner must cause notice of the annual notification and license fee requirement to be publicized between 14 and 30 days before the June 15 deadline each year, giving beekeepers a guaranteed advance reminder rather than leaving compliance entirely to individual memory.

Importing Bees Into Maine

Anyone importing bees into Maine must submit an Import Notification of Bees form along with a health certificate issued by the state of origin, plus the appropriate fee set out in DACF’s published fee schedule. This requirement exists specifically to prevent the introduction of regulated honey bee diseases, parasites, and undesirable genetic material into Maine’s resident and migratory honey bee population — a stated goal of the Apiary Program that also explicitly includes supporting, not obstructing, the interstate movement of bees needed for crop pollination and honey production, particularly Maine’s significant wild blueberry pollination industry. DACF also runs a Sentinel Apiary Programme aimed at early detection of exotic pests before they establish a foothold in the state, and separately monitors for exotic hornets — a category of invasive risk that has drawn growing national attention as species like the Asian giant hornet and yellow-legged hornet have expanded their range in North America. Keeping these exotic-pest early-warning systems well-supplied with import notifications and health certificates from every incoming shipment is part of why the paperwork requirement, modest as it looks on paper, genuinely matters to Maine’s broader apiary health strategy.

Disease Inspection

Honey bee colonies in Maine may be inspected for regulated diseases and parasites as part of the Apiary Program’s routine oversight, and beekeepers can also request an inspection of their own colonies directly through DACF’s Hive Inspection Request Form. Maine’s State Apiarist also runs educational programming on disease and pest management, including a multi-part Varroa mite integrated pest management webinar series covering mite biology, management tools, and practical techniques like the alcohol-wash counting method — positioning the inspection program as an educational resource for beekeepers, not purely an enforcement function. DACF also publishes fact sheets on honey bee seasonal management, honey bee pests and diseases, and native bees more broadly, reflecting a program that treats education as a core part of its public-health mission rather than an afterthought layered onto a purely regulatory inspection function.

Hive Placement: Guidance, Not Statute

Maine’s state licensing law doesn’t specify an exact setback distance from property lines or neighboring structures — hive placement standards in Maine come from best-practice guidance rather than codified statutory distances. The Maine State Apiarist’s own recommended practices call for keeping hives in a quiet area of the lot, not placed directly against a neighboring property unless a solid fence or impenetrable vegetative barrier at least 6 feet high forms the boundary, with hive entrances oriented so bees fly out across the beekeeper’s own property rather than a neighbor’s. These are genuinely useful, expert-backed recommendations, but they’re advisory rather than legally mandatory under state law — a Maine beekeeper’s actual binding obligations on placement, if any exist, come from local municipal ordinances rather than Title 7 itself, so checking with your specific town office remains an essential step regardless of how closely you follow the state’s own best-practice guidance. The State Apiarist’s “Honey Bee Etiquette” fact sheet expands on this guidance further, framing good hive placement less as a legal checkbox and more as an investment in staying on good terms with neighbors — since a poorly sited hive that leads to a formal complaint is often what actually triggers a municipality to consider adopting a stricter beekeeping ordinance in the first place.

Local Municipal Ordinances

Because Maine’s state licensing statute doesn’t set a binding property-line setback or hive-count limit, Maine municipalities are free to adopt their own beekeeping ordinances, and a number of Maine towns and cities have done exactly that — some requiring a local registration or permit in addition to the state DACF license, others setting specific setback distances or colony caps for residential lots. A Maine beekeeper who licenses correctly with DACF and follows the state apiarist’s best-practice placement guidance can still be out of compliance with a stricter local ordinance if they haven’t separately checked their own town’s code, so treating the state license as the only box to check is a common and avoidable mistake.

The Public Swarm Collector Directory

DACF maintains a public, searchable directory of volunteer swarm collectors across Maine, organized by town with contact names and phone numbers — as of a recent listing, the directory included close to 300 entries spanning towns from Albion to well beyond. This is a genuinely distinctive public-service feature: anyone who discovers an unwanted swarm on their property, whether or not they know anything about beekeeping, can search by their own town and find a local volunteer equipped to remove it safely rather than resorting to pest control or leaving the swarm in place. For the beekeeping community itself, the directory also functions as an informal network of experienced local contacts, which is part of why it remains actively maintained and updated by DACF rather than left as a one-time resource. DACF also tracks the state of Maine’s beekeeping industry more broadly through an annual beekeeper survey, collecting data on colony counts and winter losses each season and publishing a summary both on the department’s website and at the Maine State Beekeepers Association’s annual meeting each October — giving Maine beekeepers a genuine, ongoing picture of how the state’s honey bee population is actually faring year over year, not just a one-time snapshot.

Frequently Asked Questions

When do I need to license my bees in Maine?

By June 15 each year, along with notifying the commissioner of your colony count and location.

Does Maine have a specific setback distance for beehives from property lines?

No, state law doesn’t specify an exact distance; the state apiarist’s best-practice guidance recommends a 6-foot barrier near neighboring properties, but this isn’t a statutory requirement.