Checking my ship-to-database, there are multiple beekeepers in Wake Forest, some who have been customers for decades.

I've seen people trying to wrap "beekeeping" around more basic building/zoning violations before, hoping to get some press coverage and raise a rabble on "save the bees".
This trick never works, as local government is rarely concerned with press coverage, as their actions are dictated by laws other people wrote, and they just have to implement.

As an aside, it is a hard sell to convince any governmental body that "beekeeping" alone at the hobby/sideliner level qualifies one's property as "agricultural", and thereby entitled to treatment as "agricultural land".

There are property tax aspects, and exemptions from restrictions/regulations that would apply to "residential" land, and a few beehives is at the far end of "low-effort attempts".

That said, when I bought my farm, a former dairy farm, my neighbors asked me what I was going to do with the land.  I told them that I was going to raise bees, and I was told "That's NOT FARMING!, That's not even WORK!"
My response was to invite my detractor to come and lend a hand in spring at ear-tagging time, and THEN decide if beekeeping was "farming" and "work" or not.  

Several months later, I got a call from him.  He said "Jim, your #531 got out and is up here poking around my watering trough, you wanna come fetch him?"

Good times.

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