At least until September of 2021, beekeepers that wish to comply with the beekeeping laws and regulations will have to continue acquiring an intrastate transport permit in order to legally carry bees or beekeeping equipment across a Texas county line.
This is because there will be no bee regulation changes made in the 2019 session of the Texas Legislature. The Chairman of the House Agriculture and Livestock Committee, Representative Drew Springer, decided not to move forward with any bills having to do with bee regulation changes. This is according to a legislative aid. Thus all bee bills before the legislature will effectively die, left pending before that house committee.
There were 3 bills that specifically related to honey beekeeping and one bill specifically related to honey bee hive removal. The bills that dealt with beekeeping were SB 677, HB1723 and HB 2670. The very unpopular HB 4212 that dealt with hive removal, never received a hearing.
According to the legislative aid, Representative Drew Springer decided not to move forward because of the conflicting language between SB 677, HB 1723 & HB 2670 and the lack of unanimous support among beekeepers on any single issue stating “an interim study is needed”.
Even the simplest of these bills could not pass out of either the House nor Senate Agriculture committees. As introduced, both HB 1723 and SB 677 only repealed the intrastate bee transport permit requirement, yet even a simple repeal of this permit requirement apparently became too controversial in order to move forward.