🐝 UK Beekeeping Law: Registration & Disease Zone Simulator

About this simulation

UK beekeepers are not legally required to register their hives, but registering an apiary with the National Bee Unit's BeeBase database is the single most consequential compliance step available: it is how the government's bee inspectors know an apiary exists at all. When a notifiable disease such as American Foulbrood (AFB), European Foulbrood (EFB), or an exotic pest like Small Hive Beetle is confirmed, inspectors draw a statutory movement-restriction zone around the outbreak. Registered apiaries inside that zone get contacted directly; unregistered ones can only be found by field surveillance — meaning they may keep moving hives, equipment, or bees in a way that spreads disease before anyone intervenes.

How it works

• Disease type sets a realistic default zone radius: AFB/EFB standstill zones are commonly drawn around 3km, while exotic pest incursions such as Small Hive Beetle trigger wider protection zones, historically up to 10-16km.
• The translucent dome over the map is the live restriction zone; apiaries whose position falls inside it turn amber.
• Grey hives are unregistered — the simulation assumes inspectors cannot see them until physically discovered, so they still fall under legal restriction but are invisible to BeeBase-based contact tracing.
• Estimated inspector visits per day scales with how many registered apiaries fall inside the zone, since BeeBase contact details are what let the National Bee Unit plan its rounds.

Controls

• Disease — choose the notifiable disease or pest driving the outbreak.
• Zone radius override — manually widen or narrow the restriction zone.
• Apiary density — number of apiaries scattered across the survey area.
• BeeBase registered % — the share of apiaries that are registered.
• Highlight unregistered only — dims registered apiaries to show inspection blind spots.
• ↺ New outbreak — re-rolls the outbreak location and apiary layout.

Did you know?

Registration on BeeBase is free and voluntary in England and Wales, yet during a confirmed Foulbrood outbreak it is often the only record inspectors can use to trace which colonies, hives, and beekeeping equipment might have been in contact with the infected apiary before symptoms were reported.