Managed Beehives for Your Property in the San Francisco Area
Since 2010, The Best Bees Company has offered a unique, turnkey way for individuals and organizations to make a positive impact on the environment. Best Bees is the leading beekeeping service in the greater San Francisco area.
Our Mission
To expand the bee population while improving the health of honey bees California and across the world. Our locally certified beekeepers install and manage hives on your property and use the data we collect to drive the science of pollinator health forward with scientific partners that include Urban Bee Lab, NASA, MIT and National Geographic.
Beekeeping for Your Residential Backyard
If you'd like to save bees, build a healthier environment, pollinate your garden, and have your own honey harvest, then our residential service is perfect for you! We offer turnkey beekeeping, honey harvesting, and DNA analysis designed for homeowners in a wide range of environments. Regardless of the size of your property – whether you garden on a balcony, or have acres of land – we can set up and tend a hive (or several hives!) for you.
Expert Beekeeping
Hand-crafted, all natural equipment will be installed on your property. Ask us about custom-painted hives!
Colonies of docile honeybees will be introduced into your hive at the start of the season.
We can offer suggestions for pollinator-friendly trees, shrubs, and plants appropriate for your garden.
Our beekeepers will visit your hive for monthly maintenance visits.
You'll receive reports on the health of your hive after each beekeeper visit.
Full-time customer service team will be available to you by phone or email.
Honey Harvesting
When the bees produce surplus honey, we'll harvest, process, bottle, and deliver it for you.
If your bees need all the honey they've produced to get through the winter, we'll share surplus honey with you that we collect from hives at our partner apiaries.
Our residential beekeeping clients receive a Honey Guarantee of 5 pounds of honey per hive each year.
All honey from Best Bees is raw, unfiltered honey, delivered with custom honey labels with your name and the honey harvest date.
Data & Analysis On Your Hive
Our beekeepers will collect hive data upon each visit that will go into our proprietary hive health program 'Bzzz.'
This data is shared with our in-house scientific team who partner with other research institutions to study the data from your hive and our network of hives across the country.
As your hive data is studied and shared with partners, we will update you on scientific learnings and discoveries that are driving pollinator health forward.
For an additional fee, we can analyze the DNA analysis of your honey, reporting back to you on the number of species they've pollinated and the relative importance of each species to your bees.
Beekeeping for Your Commercial Property
We offer innovative solutions that can help bring your corporate sustainability programs to life. These include the highest standards of beekeeping, as well as developed workshops and programs that will engage your community – employees, guests, tenants, community leaders and the public – in your sustainability work.
Expert Beekeeping
Hand-crafted, all natural equipment will be installed on your property. Ask us about custom-painted hives!
Colonies of docile honeybees will be introduced into your hives at the start of the season.
We can offer suggestions for pollinator-friendly trees, shrubs, and plants appropriate for your garden.
Our beekeepers will visit your hive for monthly maintenance visits.
You'll receive reports on the health of your hive after each beekeeper visit.
Full-time customer service team will be available to you by phone or email.
Honey Harvesting
When the bees produce surplus honey, we'll harvest, process, bottle, and deliver it for you.
If your bees need all the honey they've produced to get through the winter, we'll share surplus honey with you that we collect from hives at our partner apiaries.
Our corporate beekeeping clients receive a Honey Guarantee of 10 pounds of honey per hive each year.
All honey from Best Bees is raw, unfiltered honey, delivered with custom honey labels with your name and the honey harvest date.
Our beekeeping clients have the option to choose their jar size, and add their own company logo to our cobranded honey labels.
Data & Analysis On Your Hive
Our beekeepers will collect hive data upon each visit that will go into our proprietary hive health program 'Bzzz.'
This data is shared with our in-house scientific team who partner with other research institutions to study the data from your hive and our network of hives across the country.
As your hive data is studied and shared with partners, we will update you on scientific learnings and discoveries that are driving pollinator health forward.
For an additional fee, we can analyze the DNA analysis of your honey, reporting back to you on the number of species they've pollinated and the relative importance of each species to your bees.
Products & Programming
Corporate gifts
We offer many bee products that make great gifts for your tenants, employees, or stakeholders.
Educational Events
Engage your community with educational and hands-on events run by our beekeepers.
Advanced reporting
With advanced data collection at the hive, we deliver bee health and biodiversity metrics.
How Professional Beekeeping Works
Installation
We help you choose an ideal location to establish one or more beehives at your home or workplace.
Maintenance
Our impassioned and experienced beekeepers service your beehives once a month, providing high-quality care and detailed reports.
Harvesting
You keep 100% of the raw honey produced. We'll handle the rest – small batch extraction and bottling with personalized labels.
Research
At every visit, we collect data and share it with our research partners to advance the science of beekeeping and improve the health of pollinators worldwide.
What's Included
What's Included
- Site Evaluation
- Hand-crafted, all-natural beehive equipment installed onsite
- A colony of docile honey bees (Apis mellifera ligustica)
- Monthly maintenance visits and follow up reports
- Advanced scheduling so you can alert your team
- Full-time customer service team available by phone or email
- Raw honey, harvested and bottled just for you
- Replacement colonies provided at no cost
- Fully insured professional service
Your hive at your fingertips.
What the portal delivers
San Francisco Service Area
We service hives in a 45-minute driving radius around San Francisco, including the following counties in California:
San Mateo
Alameda
San Francisco
Santa Cruz
Contra Costa
Solano
San Jose
Marin
Napa
Sonoma
Unique Challenges and Opportunities to Beekeeping in San Francisco
Beekeeping Laws in California
Unique Challenges and Opportunities to Beekeeping in San Francisco
The greatest challenges facing beekeeping in San Francisco are tied to the city’s microclimates and shifting urban landscape. While the Bay Area is known for its mild weather, recent years have brought new complexities—longer dry seasons, erratic rain patterns, and sudden temperature swings that can disrupt pollinator behavior.
These fluctuations impact bees in subtle but significant ways. Changes in fog patterns and rainfall can affect when flowers bloom and for how long, creating a mismatch between bee activity and available forage. In cooler coastal neighborhoods, hives may also experience slower buildup and require additional monitoring to ensure they’re thriving year-round.
For our beekeepers, maintaining strong colonies in San Francisco means being attuned to these microclimates. Hive placement is key—some areas benefit from more consistent sun, while others offer lush public green spaces that act as vital forage corridors. We monitor colony strength, food reserves, and bloom timing carefully throughout the year to keep our bees resilient in an ever-changing environment.
That said, San Francisco offers an abundance of opportunity for pollinators. Our HoneyDNA analysis reveals a vibrant diversity of plants in the city, including eucalyptus, lavender, rosemary, and manzanita. These species—both native and ornamental—serve as critical nectar and pollen sources throughout the year.
San Francisco’s legacy of environmental leadership is also on full display. From pollinator-friendly rooftop gardens to LEED-certified campuses and community green spaces, the city has embraced urban biodiversity as part of its identity. With continued care and intentional planting, San Francisco is proving that cities can be not just a safe haven for pollinators—but a thriving one.
Beekeeping Laws in California
Beekeeping in California is not only permitted—it’s widely supported, especially in urban areas like San Francoisco. The climate, biodiversity, and local enthusiasm for sustainability make it an ideal environment for bees. In fact, our San Franscico hives are some of the most productive in the country, often thriving year-round thanks to the region’s diverse flora and mild winters.
Unlike some states, California requires all beekeepers to register their hives annually with the local County Agricultural Commissioner. This helps protect bee populations by enabling better communication between beekeepers and pesticide applicators. Hive movement within or between counties must also be reported, and each hive must be clearly marked with contact information. At Best Bees, we take care of these requirements for our clients, ensuring full compliance with state protocols and keeping things seamless.
In the City of San Francisco, residential beekeeping is permitted with some thoughtful guidelines around hive placement, spacing, and safety. For example, hives need to be set back from property lines, positioned in certain areas of the yard, and accompanied by a nearby water source. Local ordinances are designed to keep both bees and people safe, and we’re well-versed in all the nuances of hive siting to make sure our installs meet every requirement.
Beekeeping laws and permitting processes can vary slightly across California’s municipalities—and are often updated. As a company deeply committed to ethical and transparent practices, we continuously monitor local regulations to ensure we’re providing safe, responsible, and fully compliant service across all regions we operate in.
If you're in California and thinking about becoming a pollinator champion, our team is here to help every step of the way.
About Local Honey
Honey production varies from colony to colony, depending on the strength of the queen, the health of the hive, and the availability of nourishment. New colonies tend to produce less honey than established ones. When there is a surplus of honey, we will harvest and jar it for you.
The composition and flavor of honey varies from hive to hive as well, depending on the floral species available to pollinate. This means that honey from your hive will have a unique profile. Tasting it, you are tasting the composite of all the flowers your bees have visited.
In our studies of HoneyDNA, we've found that honey from urban hives includes a much wider range of species – as much as eight times more than honey from rural and suburban hives!
The composition and flavor of honey varies from hive to hive as well, depending on the floral species available to pollinate. This means that honey from your hive will have a unique profile. Tasting it, you are tasting the composite of all the flowers your bees have visited.
In our studies of HoneyDNA, we've found that honey from urban hives includes a much wider range of species – as much as eight times more than honey from rural and suburban hives!
HoneyDNA
We pioneered the process of identifying the exact percentage of various pollen species found in honey through advanced genomic sequencing. Understanding where bees foraged reveals which plants best feed pollinators in the local environment.
Already Have a Hive?
At Best Bees, we’re proud to be a part of the local beekeeping community in every area in which we work. If not already a member of one of the area’s beekeeping associations, we encourage you to join.
Join our Community Scientist movement! Here are some ways you can participate:
- Plant more pollinator habitats on your property
- Use bee-safe pesticide alternatives
- Get involved in local and national lobbying efforts
- Submit your honey for HoneyDNA results
Your HoneyDNA results will be shared with our affiliated non-profit, The Urban Beekeeping Lab, and published on their interactive, global map of all our HoneyDNA samples, contributing to our ongoing biomonitoring research.
We gladly share the learning from our research and our best practices with everyone. To learn more about our scientific team’s past and present work, visit our Research in Action page. Our Webinar and Video Resources page holds all of our webinars, as well as our founder’s TEDx talks. Finally, check out our Blog, where you can find pollinator educational materials, beekeeping best practices, gardening information, and more thought leadership.
Testimonials
Since our founding in 2010, the knowledge and expertise of our beekeeping and customer service teams has helped us build a loyal following among both our commercial and residential customers here in the San Francisco area. These are a just a few examples of what they have to say about working with us:
Safe
Our honey bees, Apis mellifera ligustica, are the most docile species of honey bees, making our hives extremely safe and the instance of stings very unlikely.
Insured
We have a full insurance policy and can provide a Certificate of Insurance (COI) easily.
Experienced
Our beekeepers are trained to work safely in densely populated urban areas. This includes on balconies, rooftops, and skyscrapers.