We have been keeping bees since 1978. Currently, we are keeping 180 colonies of the Carniolan race (Apis mellifera carnica).
We have been rearing queens with economically important characteristics since 1999.
The registered location of our queen breeding station is in Martjanci, and our rearing bee house is registered in Vaneča. The village of Martjanci is between Murska Sobota and Moravske Toplice, and our queen breeding station is located in the center of the village, right next to the main road.
We select above-average colonies from our bee trucks and move them to the rearing bee house, where we then observe their economically important characteristics in greater detail.
Based on these observations, we select drone-rearing colonies and two parent colonies, and move them to the breeding station.
We test the economically important characteristics of 30 queens from each lineage in 36-frame hives in a bee house 30 km away.
There is a bee house with 30 colonies (10-frame AŽ hives) at our breeding station, out of which 2 parent colonies are selected as the breeding stock and the other 28 colonies serve as drone-rearing colonies. This bee house has all the necessary infrastructure (electricity, an incubator, viewing equipment, rearing equipment, etc.), its floor is tiled, and there is a drawing showing the development of all members of a bee colony on the wall. In front of the bee house we keep a small flowerbed in the shape of honeycomb cells, planted with nectar-producing herbs. The mating nucs stand in a clearing, surrounded by black locust and false indigo.
We rear up to 1,500 queens a year. We use two nucs to rear queens:
• The Kapun nuc: 1 AŽ frame. Its advantages are: the hive contains 4 AŽ frames, which are separated, so that one comb is also one mating nucleus; in the fall, they may be combined into a 4 frame nucleus, which over-winters normally. Frames from several mating nucs can also be combined into a new nucleus that is then transferred to the honey chamber of productive colonies.
This type of nuc makes it possible to evaluate the quality of reared queens;
• The KIS nuc: the frame is one-fourth the size of the AŽ frame, but is less appropriate for the sub-Pannonian climate.
Our bees have an above-average cleaning instinct, they develop very quickly in spring, and produce a lot of honey. They are suitable for beekeepers that are familiar with beekeeping technology, and for bee farms in areas with a distinct sub-Pannonian climate with less than 1,000 mm of rain a year and an average summer temperature of 20 to 25 °C.