Safely handling bees can help lower your property taxes as well as being a fun family activity and providing honey for your table. Courtesy photo

From Enterprise Staff

Texas law allows bees and beehives to qualify for reducing property taxes on plots ranging from five to 20 acres similar to livestock or raising hay. Property taxes on small acreages can now be lowered by keeping bees on the property. The bees do not have to be owned by the landowner.

Dennis Herbert drafted the original legislation for the current bee law that allows small acreage landowners to receive their agricultural valuation if they wish by raising bees on their property. He shepherded this bill through the legislature in 2011 and it became law on Jan. 1, 2012. He has been a beekeeper in Bell County for 25 years.

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Herbert will be at the 13th annual Beginning Beekeeping School to be held April 1 in Brenham. He will host several sessions that will discuss this law and how you can use beekeeping to qualify for property tax savings. He will share the history of this law and answer questions from landowners.

Other aspects of beekeeping that will also be available at the one-day school include how to start keeping bees, how to harvest honey and how to raise queens. There will also be a session that allows you to put on a bee suit and gather around a hive of live bees while it is examined by a beekeeper.

The morning sessions will include lessons for beginning, intermediate and advanced beekeepers. The afternoon sessions will have over 65 time slots and more than 45 different topics from which to choose.

For more information and to register, go to www.tinyurl.com/2023BeeSchool or call 979-277-0411.