ABOUT CARNIOLAN HONEY BEES AND QUEEN BEES

APIS MELLIFERA CARNICA HONEY BEES

​Carniolan honey bees have first been described in the year 1879 by Pollman as Apis mellifera carnica. They were named after the region of Carniola, from where the first samples of the bees were sent. This region is now the territory of the Republic of Slovenia, but reaches also to the southern part of Austria and the northern part of Croatia. It is limited by the Austrian Alps, the coast of the Jadran sea and encompasses also the southern Pannonian plain and the region of Dinarides.
However, beekeeping with Carniolan bees was highly developed long before Pollman named the bees. The hardy bees, well adapted to the cold winters in the Carniolan region were named “the gray bees” (Sivka in Slovenian) and were praised for their resistance and good honey yields. The first beekeeping instructor in Europe, Anton Janša from Slovenia, based his beekeeping system on the Carniolan bees.
In the decades before the WWI, several prominent beekeeping traders from Slovenia, such as Jan Strgar, popularised the Carniolan honey bees all over Europe and expanded their natural territory throughout present Austria, Germany, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia.
The Carniolan bees are nowadays the second most popular bee species in the world and are widely praised for their qualities.

THE MAIN QUALITIES OF THE CARNIOLAN HONEY BEES

​Carniolan honey bees are known all over the world for several excellent characteristics:

• Gentle and non-aggressive behaviour
• Good honey yields
• Good overwintering with a smaller winter cluster and smaller need for winter honey stores.
• Lack of brood during the winter, which facilitates varroa control.
• Resistance to several bee diseases, such as several brood diseases.
• Rapid spring build-up
• Calm on the comb

ABOUT US - KOZINC BEEKEEPING AND QUEEN BEE BREEDING

THE BEEKEEPING TRADITION - KOZINC BEEKEEPING

​Beekeeping has been a traditional family trade and passion since the times of my grandfather’s great grand-father Franc Vovk. He was known as one of the founder of the Rodine beekeeping brotherhood, which was established on 14th April 1781. After him, the beekeeping has been kept alive and flourishing in our family to this day by various family members, so we can proudy say that we maintain the beekeeping tradition from 1781 and even before.
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Currently, our beekeeping farm has over 250 hives. We are mainly focused on honey production and queen bee breeding, which was started in 1947 by my grandfrather Franc Vovk (named after his famous great grand-father). For several years now, we also provide quality bee packages for interested customers from Europe.

We are mostly known for our queen bee breeding work at the pedigree breeding station Krma in the Slovenian Alps, which is kept by the current chief beekeeper, Brane Kozinc.

BREEDING STATION 

​The breeding station Krma is one of the remaining few breeding stations for selected queen bees in Slovenia and is the one with the longest tradition. It has been formally established in 1947, even though it has inherited genetic lines that have been selected decades before. The breeding station has changed locations several times over the past years and is now stationed in an isolated mountain valley in the Slovenian Alps, near the Austrian border, at the relative height of more than 1000 m above sea level.

​One of the requirements for genetic quality of the mated queens is the isolation of the station, which means that there are no other bee colonies in the 5 km perimeter around the breeding station. It is additionally protected by its geographical characteristics – high rock walls and mountains that surround the isolated location, reaching up to 2.000 m.

We maintain five independent genealogical lines, for which we keep strict pedigree records, continuing from the beekeepers who have made the original selection. We are most proud of the two lines that we took over from famous Slovenian beekeepers Franc Vovk and Jan Strgar, who were ingenious exporters of Carniolan honey bees and queen bees. These lines are also the ones that Adam Kehrle took material from, when collecting brood material for Buckfast bees. We are also proud to continue more than 50 years old lines from Ciril Jalen, another famous Slovenian beekeeper. In addition to these historical lines, we also maintain our own selection, called the Kozinc line and work on further selection, based on the original characteristic of the Carniolan bees and also on the VSH characteristics of the bees.

Our breeding station has also been featured in several beekeeping documentaries, most recently in Maîtres des Abeilles by ARTE in 2019.

THE TRADITION OF BEEKEEPING TEACHERS

BRANE KOZINC - INTERNATIONAL BEEKEEPING INSTRUCTOR

​At the moment, I am proud to be participating in the humanitarian beekeeping project in Bangladesh as a beekeeping instructor. In collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture of Slovenia, Agricultural Institute of Slovenia and BRAC in Bangladesh, we are hoping to establish a beekeeping initiative to help farmers and beekeepers in Bangladesh. My role as an international beekeeping teacher is to oversee the project and to offer beekeeping knowledge both in theory and practice and to provide valuable information about implementing key beekeeping practices.

Before this project, I was a member of several other beekeeping projects all over the world and have helped with beekeeping problems in several countries, notably in Mexico and Cambodia.