Backyard Chickens and Beehives in Toronto: What the City Animal Bylaw and Ontario’s Bees Act Allow

Four Toronto households, four different positions: one still has pilot hens, one wants to start a flock, one wants a single hive, and one lives next to a hive. The law answers each of them differently.

I’m Arthur Zhao, a real estate broker in Toronto.

Walk down almost any residential street in this city in spring and you could, in theory, find four very different conversations about backyard animals happening a few doors apart. One family still has a small coop and a few hens they signed up for years ago under the City’s pilot. The family that just moved in across the road wants hens of their own for the kids. Two doors down, someone has ordered bees and is eyeing a corner by the back fence. And the people whose yard backs onto that corner are wondering whether anyone is allowed to put a hive that close.

Each of them is asking a version of “is this allowed?”, but the honest answer is different for each one, and a few of the answers turn on details people rarely read: a single subsection added in 2023, the exact place a distance is measured from, and a registration rule with no minimum hive count. I’ll take the four households one at a time.

Household one: the hens from the pilot are still in the yard

The City of Toronto once ran a hens pilot program. By-law 422-2023, enacted on May 15, 2023, deleted the pilot section (former s. 349-4.1) and the schedule of pilot zones from Chapter 349. The pilot was ended, not turned into a regular licence.

What it left behind is one transitional clause, §349-4L(3). A person who was lawfully keeping a hen or hens as part of the pilot may keep “that hen or those hens until they have died despite the end of the pilot,” provided three things stay true:

• the hens are kept at the location the City approved, under the pilot’s terms and conditions and the person’s agreement with the City;
• the Executive Director, in consultation with the Medical Officer of Health, has not determined that keeping them jeopardizes public health, the health of the hen, or is causing community disruption; and
• the person gives the Executive Director identifying information on the hens, and any other information requested, when asked.

Read the clause closely and its limits are built in. It covers the hens that person already had, not replacements. It is tied to an approved location, so in my reading it would not follow the birds to a new address. And it can end before the hens do if the City makes the health or disruption finding.

Household two: starting a flock now

According to the City of Toronto’s Municipal Code (Chapter 349, consolidated 2024), subject to the listed exceptions, “no person shall keep, either on a temporary or permanent basis, any prohibited animal in the City” (s. 349-2). A prohibited animal is any class listed in Schedule A.

Schedule A does not use the word chicken. Its bird list includes Galliformes “(such as pheasants, grouse, guinea fowls, turkeys)” and Anseriformes “(such as ducks, geese, swans, screamers).” Chickens belong to the order Galliformes, and the bylaw itself treats them that way: the hens carve-out for pilot participants sits inside the Galliformes exception in s. 349-4L. That is an interpretation of the schedule, but it is the one the chapter’s own structure points to.

Outside the special premises the chapter names (City animal centres, Riverdale Farm, Black Creek Pioneer Village and similar), the exceptions for Galliformes in s. 349-4L are narrow: land zoned agricultural; an activity the City has expressly permitted or authorized that is temporary; and the pilot holdovers above. Section 349-4O separately exempts areas of the City that have been expressly exempted by the City. A typical house lot in a residential neighbourhood fits none of these, so a new family with no pilot history has no route to backyard hens under the current text.

Household three: one hive on a city lot

Chapter 349 has no section that mentions bees or hives. The rules a would-be beekeeper can point to with certainty come from the province.

Distance. Section 19(1) of the Bees Act says no person shall place or leave hives containing bees within 30 metres of a property line separating the land the hives are on from land occupied as a dwelling or used for a community centre, public park or other place of public assembly or recreation. Section 19(2) adds a 10-metre buffer from a highway. Notice what is measured: not the distance to your neighbour’s house, but to the lot line between you. On a street of houses with neighbours on the sides and behind, my inference is that very few backyards have any spot that clears 30 metres from every neighbouring lot line. Measure your own lot before ordering bees.

Registration. Section 21(1): “No person shall be a beekeeper in Ontario without a certificate of registration issued by the Provincial Apiarist.” The Act defines a beekeeper as a person who owns or is in possession of bees or beekeeping equipment, and its regulation exempts only people who hold equipment but no bees (R.R.O. 1990, Reg. 57, s. 1.1). There is no threshold for small keepers: one hive with bees in it means you need the certificate. The application includes a return listing each apiary’s location and the number of hives in it.

A sign. Regulation 57, s. 6 requires a sign in every apiary, at least 24 cm high and 50 cm wide, showing the beekeeper’s name and address.

Penalties. According to Ontario’s Bees Act (R.S.O. 1990, c. B.6, s. 24), breaching the Act, the regulations or an inspector’s order is an offence with a fine of up to $2,000 for a first offence and up to $5,000 for any later one.

Household four: the hive is next door

For the neighbour, the useful parts of the Bees Act are the enforcement tools.

• Relocation order. An inspector who finds hives containing bees closer than the s. 19 distances may order them moved to a compliant location (s. 19(3)). The beekeeper can appeal an inspector’s order to the Director within five days of receiving it (ss. 6.1 and 7).
• Who owns it. The sign required by Regulation 57 is meant to identify the keeper by name and address, so the hive should not be anonymous.
• Inspections. Inspectors may enter premises where bees or equipment are kept between sunrise and sunset, but not a dwelling (s. 4(6)).
• Neglected colonies. Where colonies are abandoned or not regularly and properly attended, an inspector can require the beekeeper to dispose of them (s. 15(1)).
• Swarms. A beekeeper who follows a swarm onto your land must notify you before entering and compensate you for damage the entry causes (s. 3(3)).

The distance rule protects neighbouring land occupied as a dwelling. It doesn’t need a complaint to apply, but in practice, raising it with the beekeeper first, then with the province’s Apiary Program, is how a measurement turns into an inspector’s order.

What none of the four households should assume

That bees are settled at City level. Chapter 349’s Schedule A includes, under “Other,” “All venomous and poisonous animals.” The chapter does not say whether honey bees fall within that line, and I have found no City text that resolves it either way. If a hive is in your plans, ask the City directly whether it has any position beyond the provincial rules.

That the Bees Act is about to disappear. e-Laws notes that the Act is to be repealed on a day to be named by proclamation. No such day had been named in the version I read, so it remains in force.

That this applies outside Toronto. Everything about hens here is Toronto’s Chapter 349. Other municipalities have their own animal bylaws, and they differ. The Bees Act distances and registration, by contrast, apply across Ontario.

That the maximum is the usual fine. Section 349-27 sets a ceiling of $100,000 per conviction, with continuing offences carrying up to $10,000 per day, and the daily total may exceed $100,000. These are maximums a court can impose, not a ticket price.