Sandro Huter was determined to defend his bees, which were facing a looming death sentence.
A beekeeper in the forested Austrian state of Carinthia, Mr. Huter was proud of his colonies. His insects were industrious, healthy and so docile that he told the visiting state bee inspector there was no need to wear a bee suit or hat and veil.
But the bees’ demeanor was not what interested the state inspector on that fall day in 2018. The official’s attention was trained instead on an entirely different characteristic: the bees’ color.
“My bees were too dark,” Mr. Huter recalled being told. “Leather brown-orange,” the inspector wrote in the state’s report.
To conform with the law, Mr. Huter would have to replace his dark queens with light-gray ones.
Mr. Huter refused. “It’s racial fanaticism,” he said.
As with all domesticated and semi-domesticated animals, bees have long been bred by their keepers for certain traits, and the Carniolan is considered well adapted for its alpine home, better than other honey bees at surviving the snowy winters and often capricious weather. And while Carniolans will aggressively defend their hives against parasites and honey thieves, they are known to be quite docile around their human handlers.
So Carinthia’s law has many supporters among the state’s apiarists, eager to keep unwelcome characteristics out of the local bee gene pool. The neighboring state of Styria has a similar law, as does Slovenia.
But the law’s opponents see in it at least the echo of the area’s Nazi past — and cite Nazi history to further their point.
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