It has a yellowish hair and smaller wings than the most common type in Italy - ligustica, a subspecies of the honey bee.

The Sicilian Black Bee was born and developed in Sicily until the 1970s. It was then abandoned because local beekeepers preferred to import linguistic bees from the North because they were considered the standard throughout Italy for honey producers. It even risked extinction.

It is a very docile and peaceful insect, so much so that beekeepers perform honey extraction with their bare hands. They are much more resistant to extreme temperatures. They manage to produce honey both in winter and in summer at more than 40 ° C (limit temperature for other varieties of bees). The Sicula black bee is very resistant to pests and pesticides and consumes less honey than other bees.

Sicilian black bee honey is usually extracted by hand. The taste is not very different from the other honeys but has a high content of polyphenols and antioxidants.