To reach us: If you are coming from Ljubljana, turn left from the old road from Ljubljana to Kranj at the first traffic light in Medvode. If you are coming from Kranj, turn right at the third traffic light in Medvode. When you cross the railroad tracks, immediately turn left and then drive 5 km down the main road.

When you see a large bee house on the right you have arrived at the front yard of the Bukovšek Breeding Station. History In the winter of 1930/31, 15-year-old Alojz Bukovšek Sr. decided to become a beekeeper. Because there was no money for a bee house, he drew a plan for one himself and enlisted the aid of a friend, Lojze Narobe, to help him build it. They worked in secret, not knowing whether the project would work or not. Even Alojz’s mother had no idea what they were doing; he was fatherless, because his father had fallen in Tyrol during the First World War. They constructed 27 AŽ hives that are still used today.

In the spring of 1931, Alojz used a loan to buy an AŽ hive with bees, six Carniolan beehives, and a few empty AŽ hives. Later on, he would build the hives himself. Three years later, he expanded his bee house with 45 AŽ hives. Jan Strgar from Bohinj: Queen Breeder and Merchant In the fall of 1933, Jan Strgar brought his bees to forage on buckwheat on the Sora Plain. It was there that he agreed to buy Alojz’s entire bee and queen surplus. He constructed 40 mating nucs and in the spring of 1934 he started commercially rearing queens. He later increased his rearing activities even further. As it was agreed, so it was done. At the end of September he took the last queens and dry swarms (bees removed from the hives when extracting honey) to be sent to Egypt (the “land of eternal spring,” as Strgar termed it).

Descendants of Bukovšek’s Queens Today Strgar remarked that he was sending his bees to British colonies and across Europe. After the Second World War, Medex did basically the same for a few years. When Medex stopped exporting queens, Swiss beekeepers obtained their queens directly from the breeders. Australian and Canadian expatriates also bought bees from them. In late fall, they were imported to Argentina.

Even the Chinese wanted the Carniolan bee and rumor

has it they are reproducing the bees themselves now. In Europe, one would be hard pressed to find a country that does not have a Bukovšek queen. Every two years, Father Adam Kehrle would come to us for two queens. He needed them as genetic material for rearing his Buckfast bee. 

German and Austrian Testing of Carniolan Queens in 1967 In 1967, Carniolan queens were tested in Austria and Germany. 

The samples were obtained from Romania, the Banat region of Serbia, Macedonia, Austria, and the Bukovšek Bee Farm from Slovenia. Testing in Austria revealed that the local queens performed only slightly better than the Bukovšek ones. In Germany, however, our queens fared slightly better than the Austrian ones. All other lines fared considerably worse. Because of these good results, Alojz Bukovšek Jr. was invited to attend advanced courses as an apprentice at the German beekeeping institutes in Neustadt and Mayen.

Modern Rearing Today, the third generation of the family is still keeping bees and rearing queens. This is a great source of joy for grandfather Alojz Sr. and father Alojz Jr. We are endeavoring to preserve the tradition of quality queens in the future as well. Janko, Miha, and

Štefan enjoy the bittersweet flavor of beekeeping and queen rearing. Today, they manage the Bukovšek queen lineages in Switzerland and Austria (called the Bukovšek Line), as well as in Germany (called the 03 Line). 

They use Zander nucs with additional polystyrene foam insulation and polystyrene-based nucs.