A beekeeper got the idea to place beehives on the roof of a shopping center by accident. “I was driving along the motorway and thought it would be great if we could deliver our products to our customers in Ostrava. And I think we can buy a vending machine instead of opening another branch. And when I thought about where we could put it, the only place that came to my mind was Nová Karolina,” explains Chlebiš.

He rejected the shopping center management’s proposal, saying he was offering beehives on the roof in exchange for space for a honey vending machine. “And they loved it, they admitted that they had been thinking about putting bees on the roof for a long time. So our ideas met well,” he smiles.

In the pilot phase, Chlebiš brought four bee colonies to the center of Ostrava. “To start. To observe how it works there and what the conditions are like for the bees there,” he said. He estimates that in the future there may be up to 10 beehives on his roof.

Honey farm owners are not afraid of bees not having enough pastures in the heart of Ostrava. “The bees move within a radius of five kilometers, so if you make an average distance of five kilometers from Karolina, they are enough,” Chlebiš assured.

He added that alder, hazel, birch, chestnut, linden, ash and acacia trees grow and thrive in the area. “That doesn’t include the many boxes and beds people have on their balconies or around their homes,” says the keen beekeeper.

He is also not afraid that honey from the city center is not of good quality. “Beekeeping in big cities has been discussed for several years, it is commonplace in the world. And for example, in our country, several years ago, a woman who kept bees right in the center of Prague won the Honey of the Year competition three times in a row. Cities are full of places that are taken care of by society, and things grow there, we don’t see them, we don’t feel them, we don’t deal with them,” said Chlebiš.

He wants to operate a vending machine for honey farm products before Christmas this year.