Distribution; world
Montane regions of Europe, from the Pyrenees eastwards to the Balkans and the Carpathians (Konovalova, 2007):
AD, AT, BA, BG, CH, DE, ES, FR, IT, RO, *RS, RU-EU, SL, UA
Abundance; world
This is a rare species. Ponchau et al. (2006) stressed that the species could show a very low number of worker in some stations. They hypothesized that it could even live in a solitary way, while obviously most queens continue to forage themselves during the whole season. These authors also measured population densities of this species that are extremely low.
Conservation status; world
Conservation status: DE2 - RDBR (Rare), EU - RDB-VU (Nieto et al, 2014)