Brevard County Practical Guides: Beekeeping, Hive Limits and Local Honey

The Brevard County practical guides section holds one guide today, on beekeeping and local honey, covering state registration, hive limits on a home lot, county zoning text and selling honey from a Brevard kitchen.

This hub answers the main Brevard beekeeping questions in short form and routes readers to the full guide. Practical questions that belong to a county office live in other Brevard sections: lawn fertilizer and watering rules in the Brevard County gardening section, and permits, tags and property taxes in the Brevard County government section, which holds 25 guides. Residents inside Palm Bay or Melbourne city limits will find the city side in the Palm Bay and Melbourne town guides.

Yes: Florida law requires anyone in Brevard County with honey bee colonies to register with FDACS, and an inspector checks the colonies before the registration is complete (FDACS Beekeeper Registration).

The yearly fee scales with colony count, from $10 for a backyard keeper with up to five colonies to $100 for an operation running 501 or more. A Brevard applicant can open an account on the state portal or phone the area apiary inspector, and the certificate renews each year by its anniversary date with an invoice 30 days ahead. Each hive is permanently imprinted with the keeper's registration number on its upper left corner in letters at least half an inch high, and residential hives must have movable frames. Selling or moving bees inside Florida calls for a certificate of inspection, $25 plus mileage, unless the boxes are branded with that number (FDACS).

The inspection is about bee health. FDACS certifies Brevard colonies as free or substantially free from honey bee pests of regulatory significance and free from unwanted types of honey bees. A hive found with American foulbrood is destroyed by burning, the rest of that bee yard is quarantined for at least 30 days, and compensation is half the estimated equipment value, not to exceed $30 for the first 10 hives, with payment discounted after that (FDACS Beekeeper Registration).

A Brevard home lot of a quarter acre or smaller may hold 3 colonies under the FDACS Beekeeper Compliance Agreement, rising to 6 below half an acre and 10 below one acre (FDACS Beekeeper Compliance Agreement).

The caps keep climbing on larger Brevard parcels: 15 colonies from one to two and a half acres, 25 up to five acres, 50 up to ten, and 100 on ten acres or more, where the count is unlimited if every colony sits 150 feet from the lines. As a swarm control measure a keeper may double the count for no more than 60 days. The same form obliges the keeper to keep water on site for the bees at all times and to look into every colony at least monthly (compliance agreement).

FDACS applies these terms to any Brevard apiary on property not classified as agricultural (FDACS), and the agreement only takes effect once the area apiary inspector signs it (FDACS Apiary Inspection FAQ). The form FDACS links today is revision FDACS-08492 of December 2017 (compliance agreement).

The Brevard County Code, in section 62-2108 on farm animals and fowl, still names bees among animals that may not be kept where land is not zoned agricultural (Brevard County Code).

Florida law reads differently for registered hives. Section 586.10 of the Florida Statutes hands the power to regulate managed honeybee colonies, and to set rules on where inspected colonies may sit, to the state through FDACS, overriding related ordinances of counties and cities (Florida Statutes 586.10). A Brevard keeper who registers and signs the compliance agreement is therefore working under the rules the statute says control, even though the county code wording has not changed.

Parcel questions in unincorporated Brevard, such as whether land carries agricultural zoning, go to Brevard County Planning and Development at 2725 Judge Fran Jamieson Way in Viera, which handles planning, zoning and code enforcement; its appointment line is (321) 633-2187 (Brevard County Planning and Development). The Brevard beekeeping guide walks through the zoning text, the statute and agricultural land.

Yes: honey is on the FDACS list of approved cottage food products, so a Brevard home producer needs no food permit as long as yearly gross sales do not pass $250,000 (FDACS Cottage Foods).

A Brevard cottage food operation may sell on its own website, by mail order or directly to consumers in person, but not wholesale, and free samples must be prepackaged (FDACS). Under state law every jar label shows who made it and where, what it is, its ingredients by weight, how much it holds and any allergens, along with a printed notice, at least 10-point type, that the kitchen is outside state food safety regulation. Orders taken online or by mail may be delivered in person, to an event venue, or by the Postal Service or a commercial carrier (Florida Statutes 500.80).

The Brevard beekeeping guide covers what these honey rules mean for buyers of local honey.

Brevard Backyard Beekeepers is the club the University of Florida honey bee lab lists for Brevard County (UF/IFAS Honey Bee Lab).

The county extension office on Lake Drive in Cocoa (3695 Lake Drive, (321) 633-1702, weekdays 8 a.m. until 5 p.m.) runs an agriculture program; the office puts the economic impact of agriculture in Brevard County at $46 million a year (UF/IFAS Extension Brevard County). FDACS apiary inspectors handle registration visits, inspections and the compliance agreement for Brevard hives (FDACS). For a first hive in Brevard, contacting the local apiary inspector is one of the two FDACS routes to registration, alongside the online portal (FDACS Beekeeper Registration).

The table below maps the Brevard County practical questions to the key fact and the guide or section that answers each in full.

The Brevard County county services page lists the county offices, and the Palm Bay and Melbourne town guides cover city services. Last verified: October 15, 2026, on the FDACS, Florida Senate statutes, Brevard County Code (Municode) and UF/IFAS Extension Brevard County websites.