El Cajon, CA Animal Ordinances: Beekeeping (2026)

El Cajon Municipal Code Sec. 205 (Agriculture and Animals), sets eight conditions on keeping bees at a residence. Only docile bee species may be kept, and hives must be well maintained at all times. Before starting, a beekeeper must register with the County of San Diego Department of Agriculture, Weights and Measures, a state-mandated step the city folds directly into its local permission. Placement is tightly controlled: hives cannot be visible from the public right-of-way, cannot sit in the exterior or front yards, and must clear the required setbacks of the underlying zone, meaning a hive has to sit further back than the zone's minimum building setback line even though it is not a structure.

The code caps both the number and the size of hives: up to four beehives are permitted per property, and each individual hive cannot exceed 15 cubic feet in volume, a limit that pushes larger-scale hobbyist operations toward multiple smaller hives rather than one oversized box. Because beekeeping sits in the same chapter as the city's other residential animal-keeping rules, such as the four-pet cap for dogs and cats (Sec. 030) and the pot-bellied pig rules (Sec. 040), the same enforcement mechanisms used for those uses, including administrative zoning permits and code enforcement inspections, apply to hive placement disputes and complaints.

There is no fee schedule or permit application printed within Sec. 035 itself; the operative controls are the siting standards and the county registration requirement.