Beekeeping Museum

Although it might not sound like a crowd-pleaser, the Beekeeping Museum is one of the most interesting in the country, and there's not a whole lot you won't know about things apiarian after buzzing around for an hour or so inside. The museum is housed (together with a music school) in Thurn Manor, which began life as Ortenburg Castle in the early Middle Ages but was rebuilt with a large hall on the ground floor after the earthquake of 1511.

The cream-and-white structure has interesting reliefs and stucco work on its facade. The museum's exhibits take a close look at the history of beekeeping in Slovenia (which was at its most intense in the 18th and 19th centuries), the country's unique contribution to the industry with the development of the Carniolan grey bee species (Apis mellifera carnica) and the research of men such as Anton Janša (1734-73), who set up a research station in the Karavanke and is considered around the world as the 'father of modern beekeeping'. And the museum doesn't fail to pass on a few fun facts to know and tell. Did you realise that bees cannot see the colour red but go gaga over yellow? The museum's collection of illustrated beehive panels (panjske končnice) from the 18th and 19th centuries, a folk art unique to Slovenia, is the largest in the country.

Bees are still kept in Slovenia for their honey and wax but much more lucrative are such by-products as pollen, propolis and royal jelly used as elixirs and in homoeopathic medicine. Propolis is a brownish, waxy substance collected from certain trees by bees and used to cement or caulk their hives. Royal jelly, so beloved by the European aristocracy of the 1920s and 1930s and by the Chinese today, is the substance fed to the queen bee by the workers.