The Carniolan honey bee (Apis mellifera carnica) is an indigenous subspecies of the Western honey bee in Central Europe. Croatia represents a large part of its native range. Hybridization and introgression is a realistic possibility due to unmonitored imports by beekeepers. In this study, we focused on honey bee colonies managed by beekeepers from all over Croatia and Slovenia. The identification of the subspecies was based on wing geometric morphometrics. The similarity of all investigated colonies to A. m. carnica was substantial, which indicates that the native subspecies continues to be present in the study area. However, some of the colonies differed markedly from the currently available reference of this subspecies. The low similarity with reference samples can be related both to hybridization with non-native subspecies and to natural geographical variation within A. m. carnica. The data and results obtained from this morphometric analysis will provide a deeper insight into the phenotypic characterization of the studied honey bee populations and directions for future conservation strategies.

Carniolan蜜蜂（Apis mellifera carnica）是中欧西部蜜蜂的本土亚种。克罗地亚是其本国范围的很大一部分。由于养蜂人未监控进口情况，杂交和渗入是现实的可能性。在这项研究中，我们重点研究了来自克罗地亚和斯洛文尼亚各地养蜂人管理的蜂群。对亚种的鉴定是基于机翼几何形态学的。所有调查菌落与A. m。的相似性。卡尼卡数量很大，这表明研究区域仍存在本地亚种。但是，某些菌落与该亚种的当前参考文献存在显着差异。与参考样品的低相似性可能与与非本地亚种的杂交以及与A.m.内的自然地理变异有关。卡尼卡（Carnica）。从形态分析中获得的数据和结果将为研究蜜蜂种群的表型表征和未来保护策略的方向提供更深入的见解。