Registering your bee hives in France

Posted by Jon on May 25, 2010 in Regulations | 3 comments

Since January 2010, it has been a legal obligation to register your bee hives with the DSV (Direction des Services Vétérinaires) for both hobby beekeepers and professionals. This is simply to ensure that the DSV knows where bees are given the current difficulties faced by all bees.

The form is very simple – it asks for your name, address and contact details, the number of hives (ruches) that you have and where they are situated (Lieu-dit ou emplacement). It also asks if you have the intention of transporting populated hives outside the department regularly and if you are going to raise bees commercially. For hobby beekeepers the answer to both questions B & C is Non. As a hobby beekeeper, you will be assigned a unique NUMAGRIT number during this process.

To download the form (formulaire), click here.

To find the address and phone no. of your départemental DSV, click here.

You will need to check if they will give you your Numagrit number over the phone or whether they assign it once you have sent your form in. In the Vienne they ask you to send the form in with a copy of a piece of identity and a SAE and they send back your Numagrit number.

You must declare your hives within one month of starting up and the declaration must be renewed every year. As this is the first year, we will have to wait to see if they will send out reminders or not.