Vladimir and Antonia met coincidentally 5 years ago at Vladi’s apiary. The two are from different worlds, but their love for nature binds them together and today they keep over 120 hives in the abandoned village called Debeltsovo. They take care of their bees in a magical place near the lake. Alexander Stamboliiski, far away from city life. They produce an organic certified honey bouquet that has a unique taste and purity. They are also experimenting with the use of clay hives, which are a forgotten ecological way of keeping our favorite creatures – the bees.

Vladi and Tony participate in the Adopt a Hive program ????

“I can say that there have always been bees around me. My father took care of 15-16 bee colonies, they were in the yard in the house we lived in. From the time I was 9-10 years old, I would stand and watch the bees fly, how they carried pollen on their legs, how the guard bees kept out and chased away the foreign ones. Back then I didn’t understand anything, I only helped with the honey extraction. And so eventually, over the years, I began to care for the bee colonies too.

After finishing school I enrolled in university with a degree in engineering. But it wasn’t for long, because I knew it wasn’t my passion. My life was somewhere out there, away from the city, in some quiet village in nature. So I moved to live in the village of Kukrina in an old inherited house. Then I bought a property and made an apiary in the abandoned village of Debeltzovo just above the Alexander Stamboliiski dam. There is no asphalt road to the village and sometimes getting there is a real adventure. I chose this place because it is located far away from farmland and pollution. In a few years I increased the hives to about 120 and today my apiary is organic certified by all standards.

So in the summer of 2016, I also met my girlfriend Antonia for the first time, right there in that abandoned village, at the apiary while I was working on the hives. It was at that moment that fate met us and we have been inseparable ever since. She has lived abroad all her life and wandered in the big cities, but today we live peacefully in a picturesque Bulgarian village, far from the hustle and bustle of the city. Gradually and timidly the bees have become part of her life and now we take care of them together.

Our honey yields are not high, as the area is about 500m high with only meadow and forest vegetation. But the taste and quality of the honey is of an extremely high level.”