The beginnings of the Pislak Bee Farm go all the way back to 1946, when Janko Pislak bought his first skep. Nowadays, our farm uses pastures in the Haloze area all the way to the Croatian border, from the foothills to the top of the Pohorje Massif, as well as pastures along the Dravinja Valley. Altogether, we have about 2,400 productive hives, and we are one of the largest bee farms in this part of Europe. Our main activities include rearing Apis mellifera carnica queens, production of royal jelly and honey, and production of honey-based drinks.
Our queen-breeding station is located in northeastern Slovenia, 10 km from Slovenia’s oldest town of Ptuj, at an elevation of 230 m. You can find us 5 km from the main highway between Graz (Austria) and Zagreb (Croatia) via Maribor and Ptuj, southwest of Ptuj, towards Kidričevo or Ptujska Gora (see our website www.cebelarstvo-pislak.si for our location and information on how to find us).
We have been rearing queens for over 30 years now and in 2007 we reared our 400,000th queen.
The rearing of queens begins quite early at our breeding station, usually by the beginning of May. This was achieved with a good selection of sunny locations for our rearing apiaries, the vicinity of drone congregations, and great care for drone lines, resulting in a good rate of mated queens. Our original mating nuc, created on the basis of Janko Pislak’s 30 years of queen-rearing experience, has contributed in many ways to the high quality rearing of outstanding queens. This nuc is very well insulated, it is easy to manage and clean, and it is economical.
The selection is made from 2,400 productive colonies, which provides us with a large quantity of top-quality breeding stock for primary selection and testing. Based on our extensive experience and knowledge of our bees’ properties, we have set a number of selection criteria: honey yield, decreased swarming impulse, calmness, queen size, cleaning abilities, the number of bees in the colony, and racial purity. In order to ensure top-quality breeding stock, we first select queens with the best economic results on the basis of ongoing observation of the selection criteria listed above, followed by a further selection based on morphological characteristics and disease resistance.
The quality of queen rearing is ensured by a group of experts, which also includes a veterinarian and three beekeeping experts from the Graz School of Beekeeping; in addition, we constantly work together with the Agricultural Institute of Slovenia.
Our rearing successes and high-quality work have been acknowledged by various awards presented by a number of institutions in Slovenia and abroad.
The quality of our queens is appreciated in Slovenia and beyond.
More than half of our reared queens are exported abroad, to Germany, France, Austria, Italy, Croatia, Jordan, and Japan. We pack the queens in our own packaging or packaging provided by the buyer, and larger quantities are shipped by airmail. You can find more information about us and our queens on our website, by e-mail, or over the phone.
Please come and visit us. If you need assistance or advice, our experts will be happy to help you.