When Arthur “Tip” Sempliner got the registered letter from the city, it seemed like he’d been caught in a sting operation.

“It threatens to fine me $2,000,” Sempliner said — because he didn’t provide water for the beehive at his Douglaston, Queens, home.

Not only did Sempliner have a water dispenser two feet away from the hive, his home sits next to Little Neck Bay, where the bees could get all the water in the world.

“There’s 13 trillion cubic feet of water within reach of the bees!” the 67-year-old inventor and cartoonist said.

“It’s just nuts,” he said about the letter telling him to show up at an administrative hearing in lower Manhattan next month.

The bizarre tale began when his friend, John Pettingill, asked him if he could move his more than 5,000 bees from his place in Brooklyn.

“He asked me if I could put a hive in front of my house and I said, “Yeah, that sounds pretty neat,’ ” Sempliner recalled.

In order to put up a hive, you have to register with the city, and Sempliner filed the paperwork in April. Four weeks ago a city inspector showed up, and four days ago the registered letter arrived.

“It says I set up a nuisance because I didn’t have a water jug,” he said

Sempliner is a resourceful guy who holds more than 40 patents for things like a double-fan hair dryer and improvements on a bobsled.

He put a water dispenser on the ground just two feet from the hive, which looks like a chest of four drawers.

But the bees have their tastes. “They never drink the water,” Sempliner said of the dispenser.

“Bees like salt water,” he said, pointing out Little Neck Bay, a hop, skip and a buzz away.

And if they wanted fresh water, said Sempliner, “Over to the left is Alley Pond Preserve, and they’ve got four or five fresh water ponds. The other side of Douglaston is Udalls Cove, which has other ponds.”

As word of his run-in with the city spread, Sempliner got a call from Paul Cappy, the state government’s official apiculturist, or bee expert.

“He tells me he wrote this law that New York City has, and this is not the way it’s supposed to be enforced,” Sempliner said.

The law was designed for beekeepers in confined places not near water.

“It was written for people who wanted to keep a hive on top of an apartment building in Brooklyn,” Sempliner said.

He said he heard that the fine is going to be dropped and replaced with a warning. But he couldn’t reach anyone in city government to confirm that.

“I called them, but I couldn’t get through and nobody called me back,” he said.

Through it all, Sempliner said he still gets along with the bees.

“They’re all over the place. They’re calm, little industrious creatures,” he said.

ikimulisa.livingston@nypost.com

