Mississippi Beekeeping Laws and Regulations (2026 Guide)

Stacked beehive boxes, the kind of apiary equipment Mississippi regulates under its certificate-of-inspection and interstate movement rules

Mississippi doesn’t require beekeepers to register their apiaries — one of the few states where registration is entirely voluntary — but the state runs one of the most detailed inspection-certificate systems in the country for anyone moving bees across its borders. That’s not a contradiction: Mississippi’s law separates “does the state track your hobby hives” from “can you legally ship or bring in commercial quantities of bees,” and treats the second question with real regulatory weight, right down to specific infection-rate thresholds and mite-count standards spelled out in the rules themselves.

This guide covers Mississippi’s voluntary apiary registration system under the Bee Disease Regulations (Mississippi Code Annotated §§69-25-101 through 69-25-109), the state’s detailed certificate-of-inspection standards for interstate movement, the 30-day entry permit requirement for bringing colonies into Mississippi, and the 3-mile Africanized bee quarantine radius.

Key Takeaways

Mississippi does not require apiary registration; it’s entirely voluntary, though registered apiaries don’t expire until the owner gives written notice.
Beekeepers bringing colonies into Mississippi need an entry permit from the Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI), backed by a certificate of inspection submitted at least 30 days in advance.
Mississippi’s certificate standards set specific numeric thresholds: no more than 2% American foulbrood infection, 5% European foulbrood, or 25% chalkbrood, based on inspecting at least 10% of the applicant’s apiaries.
If Africanized or hybridized bees are suspected anywhere in Mississippi, every apiary within a 3-mile radius is automatically quarantined until the area is cleared.
Mississippi’s own certificate-of-inspection standard doesn’t require certifying freedom from the small hive beetle — only foulbrood, mites, and Africanized-bee status — a real regulatory gap that played a direct role in Alaska’s first-ever small hive beetle detection in 2025, traced to a package shipped from Mississippi.

Voluntary Apiary Registration
Entry Permits and the 30-Day Certificate Rule
Certificate of Inspection Standards
The 3-Mile Africanized Bee Quarantine
What Mississippi’s Certificate Doesn’t Cover
Frequently Asked Questions

Voluntary Apiary Registration

Under Mississippi’s Bee Disease Regulations, apiaries may be registered by legal description with the Bureau of Plant Industry each year, but registration itself is not mandatory — Mississippi is one of the relatively few states, alongside places like Hawaii, that leaves apiary registration voluntary rather than requiring it for every beekeeper. Both commercial and non-commercial beekeepers may register, though non-commercial beekeepers who choose to register must meet the same requirements that apply to commercial apiaries. Once filed, a registration doesn’t expire on any set schedule; it remains active until the apiary owner submits written notice to cancel it. In practice, this means Mississippi’s registry captures a self-selected slice of the state’s beekeeping community rather than a mandatory, complete census the way many other states’ laws are designed to produce.

Entry Permits and the 30-Day Certificate Rule

Where Mississippi’s law gets genuinely strict is interstate movement. A beekeeper who wants to transport into, operate, and maintain colonies in Mississippi must first obtain an entry permit from the Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI), and getting that permit requires submitting a certificate of inspection from a state apiary official at least 30 days before entering the state, along with the number of colonies involved. If bees are brought into Mississippi without a valid entry permit, they’re placed under immediate quarantine until a state inspector clears them. Migratory beekeepers who move colonies in and out of Mississippi repeatedly can instead enter into a formal Compliance Agreement with BPI, which requires notifying BPI in writing 30 days before any move, reporting the colonies’ arrival within 24 hours, disclosing every state and county the colonies were kept in over the preceding 12 months, and agreeing not to knowingly bring infested or infected colonies into the state. All beekeepers moving bees into or through Mississippi are also required to keep them covered by netting to prevent escape during transport.

Certificate of Inspection Standards

Mississippi’s regulation doesn’t just require a certificate — it specifies exactly what that certificate has to demonstrate. At least 10% of an applicant’s apiaries must have been inspected within 10 months of the certificate’s date, with colony infection rates not exceeding 2% for American foulbrood, 5% for European foulbrood, or 25% for chalkbrood, and the inspection has to happen while the colonies are actively rearing brood so problems aren’t missed in a dormant period. For mites, certification requires survey evidence that control has actually been achieved — specifically, ether rolls on 100 bees per 5 colonies showing no more than 3 mites per roll, or sticky boards under Apistan strips showing no more than 10 mites per board. Africanized-bee-free status can be certified four different ways: testing 100% of queen mothers using the FABIS Fresh Weight Method, using only certified production queens with proof of purchase, operating under a compliance agreement for European Bee Best Management Practices, or sourcing bees from a designated Africanized-Honey-Bee-Free zone. Every lot of package bees, queens, or nucs shipped into Mississippi must have this certificate securely attached from its state of origin — and Mississippi’s own inspectors apply the same rigor when certifying an operation for export, checking annual inspection records for producers of packages, queens, and nucs specifically. Mississippi also maintains reciprocal enforcement teeth built into the regulation itself: if BPI repeatedly finds that bees shipped from another state under that state’s official certificates exceed Mississippi’s own certification thresholds, or receives credible proof that the sending state’s inspection standards are inadequate, BPI can simply stop recognizing that state’s certificates entirely until its inspection service demonstrates it’s trustworthy again – giving Mississippi’s program leverage over the quality of certificates it accepts from elsewhere, not just the certificates it issues.

The 3-Mile Africanized Bee Quarantine

If a suspected colony of Africanized or hybridized African/European bees turns up anywhere in Mississippi, the response isn’t limited to that single apiary. The affected colonies are depopulated and the apiary quarantined, but the regulation goes further: every apiary within a 3-mile radius of the detection is also placed under quarantine until an examination confirms no other affected yards exist in the area. This mirrors the geographic-radius approach some other states use for buffer zones, but here it’s triggered specifically and only by an Africanized-bee suspicion, rather than functioning as a standing rule for ordinary hive placement.

What Mississippi’s Certificate Doesn’t Cover

Mississippi’s own list of “contagious diseases, parasites, and pests” that its inspection program targets includes American and European foulbrood, tracheal mites, varroa mites, chalkbrood, and Africanized or hybridized bees — but it doesn’t include the small hive beetle, which is endemic throughout Mississippi and much of the southern United States. That’s directly relevant to a real, documented 2025 incident: Alaska’s Division of Agriculture traced its first-ever confirmed small hive beetle detection to a bee package imported from a Mississippi apiary, and the certificate that Mississippi’s Bureau of Plant Industry issued for that shipment certified the bees free of foulbrood but said nothing about small hive beetles, because Mississippi’s own certification standard simply doesn’t ask that question. This isn’t a story about anyone breaking Mississippi law — the certificate was accurate for what it was designed to certify. It’s a concrete illustration of a gap that can open up whenever a pest is common enough in an origin state’s regulatory framework to go unlisted, but rare or absent enough in a destination state to cause real damage on arrival. Beekeepers importing bees from anywhere small hive beetle is endemic should treat foulbrood-and-mite certification as necessary but not sufficient, and ask specifically about small hive beetle status before bringing packages into a beetle-free region. Mississippi beekeepers shipping outbound face the flip side of this same gap: because the state’s own certificate template doesn’t ask about small hive beetle, a Mississippi seller who wants to reassure an out-of-state buyer in a beetle-free region needs to proactively document and disclose beetle-inspection results beyond what the standard certificate requires, rather than assuming a clean official certificate tells the whole story.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to register my apiary in Mississippi?

No, registration with the Bureau of Plant Industry is voluntary in Mississippi, not mandatory.

What do I need to bring bee colonies into Mississippi?

An entry permit from BPI, backed by a certificate of inspection submitted at least 30 days before you enter the state.

What infection rates does Mississippi’s certificate of inspection allow?

No more than 2% for American foulbrood, 5% for European foulbrood, or 25% for chalkbrood, based on inspecting at least 10% of the applicant’s apiaries.