Hays County Beekeeping Ag Exemption

Hays County CAD lists keeping bees among the agricultural uses in its own definitions, beside cultivating the soil, producing crops and raising livestock. Bees kept for pollination count, and so do bees kept to produce human food or other tangible products carrying a commercial value, on land of not less than 5 or more than 20 acres. Twenty acres is the ceiling on what bees can carry. Past that, the extra acres need an agricultural use of their own.

Where a residence stands on the tract the district assigns part of the land as residential use, and that piece is the homesite. The floor is five qualifying acres, and the manual requires them over and above it. The manual gives three examples of how the district may set the homesite's size, and one of them is the acreage you named on your homestead exemption application, if you filed one specifying it. The homesite comes out before anything is counted for the bees, and the manual puts no number on the additional acreage. So a five-acre tract with a house on it doesn't reach the floor, because the homesite comes off the top and leaves under five.

The land also needs a farming history behind it. A first beekeeping application has to show proof of history of principal and primary agricultural use on the land for five of the preceding seven years. That's state law for this valuation, and beekeeping counts toward it, so raw land starts the clock when the hives go out. On a place with no farming behind it that means five years of market-value tax bills before a first application can succeed. The years attach to the tract itself, so land already in hay or cattle carries its history across to a new owner. Where the history is in doubt the manual lists what it will accept. That list runs from an IRS Schedule F through livestock receipts to sworn affidavits and dated pictures, and feed receipts are off it. Agriculture has to stay the principal use throughout, and the intensity test is aimed at land where token agricultural use is happening in an effort to obtain tax relief. Inside a city's boundaries Hays County CAD prints a five-year route. The land must have been in principal agricultural use, without a break, for the five years before the application, and once it's approved it must stay in continuous use with no rest periods.

Section 23.56 is the statute behind in-city land. It bars a tract inside city limits unless one of its conditions is met, and one of those is five years of continuous agricultural use. Another turns on the city not giving that land the same services it gives comparable parts of town. Clearing any one of them lifts the bar and nothing more, so the five-of-seven history and the intensity standard still apply. That's worth raising if your acreage was annexed. Call the district about a tract in town before you spend anything.

January 1 is the date everything turns on. The land has to be in a qualifying agricultural use as of January 1 of the year you apply, and the manual adds that an applicant's intent to have agricultural use does not qualify as agricultural use. A signed agreement with no colonies on the place buys nothing that year. Sign by the end of September and the last quarter of the year is free for placing hives and letting them settle. If you're putting your own bees out, packages don't get to Central Texas until April into May.

The hives have to stay put after that. The manual requires that to continue to qualify the hives must be located on the property for the calendar year and all hives must be maintained and kept alive. A dead-out standing in the yard is still a hive on the place, but it isn't a hive kept alive, so presence on its own doesn't hold the standard. Colonies die. Run a colony or two over the minimum and a loss doesn't put you under it. If you have a managed beekeeping agreement with us, we restock the hive to ensure you meet the count. Ours stay on your land year-round and we don't run pollination contracts that would move them off.

The district requires one more document of a beekeeping applicant. The property owner submits a landscape plan indicating how different plantings contribute to bee foraging. The district's own examples of those plantings are fruit trees, shrubs, vines, flowers, clover, buckwheat and vetch. Page 18 of the same manual sets a separate standard for bee land, which must produce enough flowering and pollen producing species to negate the need for supplemental feeding of the bees, and it counts native vegetation and planted species alike. Ask Hays County CAD what that list means for your place before you file. We produce the vegetation plan and supply it with your file. We don't plant anything. We come out, log what's already in bloom through the season, and point out the thin spots. Here that's usually Texas mountain laurel early, prairie verbena through high summer and goldenrod at the end of the season, with mesquite and yaupon scattered over most of the county. There's more on what carries a hive through a Central Texas year. If your land already carries bloom across the season and you'd rather draw the plan yourself, it isn't complicated work.

Filing runs on state form 50-129 and it's due by April 30. It's signed by the property owner or an authorized agent, and the supporting documents have to go in with it. A valid and current lease agreement is on the district's list of those, and under a managed beekeeping agreement that's the document. The manual sets out what one has to name, down to the lessee's telephone number and the rent if any is paid. Ours carries the owner and the property, the acreage, the purpose and the term, our name, address and phone, and both signatures. For good cause the chief appraiser may extend the filing deadline, up to 60 days. Miss it without an extension and the district still has to take a late application, up to the point the appraisal review board signs off that year's roll. The Tax Code requires the board to finish by July 20 and it can come earlier, so the sign-off closes the window whenever it comes. An approved late application carries a penalty of 10 percent of the tax difference under Section 23.541(b). That same subsection waives the penalty for a change-of-ownership application under 23.541(a-2), which needs the land to have held the valuation last year, the new owner to run it materially the same way, the same people to oversee that use, and the filing to arrive before the taxes go delinquent or inside twelve months of the transfer, whichever of those falls later.

After the grant, the district comes back. Properties qualifying for bee management are inspected one to two times a year by Hays County CAD's ag appraiser. That starts with aerial imagery. If the use isn't clear from the images they come out and inspect, and if it can't be seen from the road either, a letter goes to the owner asking for immediate access. The valuation also comes off when the ownership name changes, when acreage changes through a split or plat, or when the chief appraiser decides the file needs updating, and it stays off until a fresh application is approved. Fall short of the standard and it comes off the same way. The manual defines two ways out. A drought declared by the Governor's Office over most of the year, which the district may take as a decrease in intensity and not a change in use. And a rest period, which needs written notice to the district by April 30, runs one calendar year at a time, takes proof of a qualifying activity, and outside a drought proclamation can't total more than two years in seven. The manual's list runs to government programs and livestock and cropland work, so settle a rest year with Hays County CAD before you count on one. Section 23.54(h) leaves one duty with the owner. Write to the appraisal office by the April 30 that follows, once the land stops qualifying or once its agricultural use moves to a different category. Miss that letter and every year the valuation ran on in error carries a 10 percent penalty on the tax gap.

The rollback is a different matter. Hays County CAD reprints Section 23.55(a) through (e), and it states that a rollback penalty may be imposed where land under the valuation changes to a non-agricultural use, or where the owner stops using the property for an agricultural use. The additional tax reaches back three years and is set at the gap between the tax actually paid and the tax a market-value appraisal would have brought. No interest on the recaptured amount. Change the use of only a piece of a parcel and the rollback reaches that piece alone. The Hays County Tax Office does the calculating and the billing, not the district. The chief appraiser makes that determination and has to give you notice of it explaining your right to protest, and a protest of that change-of-use determination is due within 30 days of the notice reaching you. A denied application runs on a different clock, so ask the district which one you're on.

You stay Hays County CAD's point of contact. Our people are on the property at least once a month, year-round, and we can say what's out there, but we don't deal with the district for you and we don't file your application. We handle the Texas Apiary Inspection Service registration, and it covers each county we work in along with every yard we keep. Your place goes on it and you get documentation showing that. Hays County CAD no longer requires a copy. We keep it current anyway, because it's one more piece of evidence behind an ag-use claim. Registering has no bearing on whether the district qualifies the land. Visits get logged in the Outlaw Hideout. Pull a report whenever you want one. The district decides what weight to give it. The honey off your place is yours. If selling it isn't work you want, we'll offer to buy the harvest from you. If you'd rather sell it yourself, the packaging option we run handles bottling and labeling, so you've got a finished product to sell.