Carniolan honey bee

The Carniolan honey bee (Apis mellifera carnica) is a subspecies of the honey bee from central Europe. Slovenia (Carniola) is traditionally regarded as its homeland, and the subspecies was named carnica in 1879. The bees are very gentle and build up explosively in spring, but they tend to swarm.

Workers have grey to greyish-yellow hair and a dark abdomen, sometimes with leathery-brown spots on the first segments, as the Slovenian Beekeepers' Association describes it; NC State calls the colour black. Queens are light brown, leathery brown or dark; drones have a dark abdomen, never yellow. Yellow first segments exclude a bee from breeding.

In Slovenia only this subspecies may be kept, bee imports need approval from the Ministry of Agriculture, and only bees with typical traits enter the Pure-Line Carniolan Bee Breeding Register. Carniolans overwinter in relatively small colonies and use moderate amounts of stores; according to NC State they overwinter well and build up fast in spring, which lets them exploit early blooms.

Why this matters to you. The gentleness of the Carniolan bee lets a beekeeper work with little smoke and no protective clothing (NC State). But the tendency to swarm can leave the beekeeper with a poor crop, so colonies need room and attention.