They started making and registering coats of arms in the cities of the Russian Empire in the XVIII century. Above all else, it was necessary for the battle flags of the regiments that were distributed throughout the country and received local names. Since Tambov did not have its own emblem, in 1729 the Military Collegium, the supreme body of military administration established by Peter the Great, took up the task of making a coat of arms for Tambov. One year later, Empress Anna Ioannovna officially approved the coat of arms of Tambov. 

The first drawing and bearing referred to the local industry — beekeeping, which developed in these lands back in the pre-Mongolian period. Before the Russian colonization, the indigenous inhabitants of the Tsna basin, called the Mordva-Moksha, paid tribute to the Kievan princes with honey and beeswax. Over time, Mordovian winter camps became commercialized, and beekeeping — the extraction of honey from wild bees — was separated into a separate economy. By the XVIII century Tambov region became a Russian province with developed agriculture and organized beekeeping, over time wild forest bees were replaced by apiaries with hives. The second drawing and bearing reminded of Tambov’s border position and that it was built as an unassailable fortress to defend from the Crimean Tatar raids.