Caldwell County Beekeeping Ag Exemption

The photo has to show the property with the hive locations identified on it, and it goes in with your application. It's quick work. On a place we manage we produce it for you, with the yards marked where the colonies will sit. If you put one together yourself, Google Earth is a good place to start.

The hives must be on the property eight months of the year, and every one of them has to be maintained and kept alive. Ours stay put the whole twelve, because we won't risk jeopardizing your ag valuation to run pollination contracts that would move them.

The application is state form 50-129, the Texas 1-d-1 agricultural use appraisal form. It goes to Caldwell CAD between January 1 and April 30, signed by the owner or a designated agent. For good cause the chief appraiser can push that out by up to 60 days, so long as the written request reaches the district before the April 30 deadline. Miss it and Tax Code 23.541 still lets a late application through, right up to the day the appraisal review board signs off on the appraisal records. A late filing costs 10 percent of what the valuation saved that year. One exception gets you out of that penalty. If the tract already carried the valuation last year, and you keep working it the same way with the same people running it, you owe nothing extra, and you have until the delinquency date or the first anniversary of the transfer, whichever is later. After that you're waiting on the next tax year. A denial comes back by certified mail with the reasons, and you have 30 days to protest it or appeal to the Appraisal Review Board.

Caldwell CAD may inspect a bee property one or two times a year to check compliance. It's checking that you have the right number of hives for your acreage and that they're alive on the land. Every inspection we run on your hives goes into Outlaw Hideout, the app our clients log into. You get an email when we log an inspection, and you can pull a report from it any time to provide more supporting information to the CAD that this is a functional agricultural operation.

Taking the land back out of agricultural use triggers a rollback. State law reaches back three years and recaptures what the valuation saved over that stretch, with no interest added to the recapture. Interest only starts if the bill goes delinquent after it's issued. The rollback applies only to the part of the tract whose use changed, so putting a house pad on one corner puts only that corner at risk.

You must notify Caldwell CAD in writing before May 1 if the land stops being eligible or the category of agricultural use changes. Pulling the bees off for good is exactly that kind of change, and Tax Code 23.54 puts a penalty on missing the notice, 10 percent of the tax difference for every year the valuation was allowed in error. That's separate from anything the rollback does. The district also wants written notice before May 1 if you mean to let the land rest for the year, and it has a Rest Request form for that.

Land inside an incorporated city can be ineligible whatever the hive count. Tax Code 23.56 keeps city tracts out of the valuation unless they clear one of the exceptions written into it. If your place sits inside Lockhart or Luling, or close up against a city line, call Caldwell CAD at (512) 398-5550 before you spend anything on bees.

The five-of-seven history runs with the land. Caldwell County is cotton, corn, and milo country with cattle on the pasture, so a tract that's been farmed or grazed may already have its years behind it if somebody can document them. Buying the place doesn't reset that clock and doesn't start one either. But a year the land sat empty isn't a year in agricultural use, so a tract that spent a long stretch on the market may have fewer usable years behind it than its age suggests.

A homesite comes out of the tract, and your hive count runs against the rest. Caldwell CAD confirmed on July 13, 2026 that the carve-out starts at one acre and can grow from there. You grow it yourself. Tax Code 11.13 lets you claim the house plus up to 20 acres used in living there, and every acre you claim is an acre the hive count no longer runs against. Caldwell's schedule starts at five acres, so on a twelve-acre tract, claiming ten for the homestead leaves two and there is nothing left to qualify. The district also reads a small tract with a house on it as residential first, unless the tract is part of a larger operation. That isn't a wall. It means the evidence that your land is in real agricultural production carries more weight, and the more of it you can show, the better.

Caldwell County is blackland and post oak southeast of Austin, along the San Marcos River. That's different country from the limestone hills west of here, and it grows a different mix of forage. We walk your land before we set a hive on it and work out what's already feeding bees and when. Our guide to Central Texas honey plants covers the Central Texas bloom month by month.