Posted on by Matt Gilligan

A Beekeeper Turned Thieving Bears into (Unpaid) Honey-Tasters

If you’re a person of a certain age, then there’s a good chance the characters from Winnie the Pooh are near and dear to your heart.

Which also means that you’ve been aware for basically your whole life that bears really, really love honey.

Like Pooh, giant bears will go to great lengths to get to honey they’ve sniffed out – and even though the ensuing videos may be adorable to the masses, for to bee farmers…not so much.

The bears can cause damage to hives that can cost thousands of dollars to repair, so most keepers work hard to keep them away. But when Ibrahim Sedef’s ideas of putting up metal cages and leaving out different bear-fare like bread and fruit didn’t work, he had a rather adorable lightbulb moment.

Maybe the bears could be brought on as quality control.

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Beekeeper turns honey-stealing bears into taste testers #FACTS AUG. 29, 2019 – These #bears just wanted a little smackerel from the honey pot. And #beekeeper Ibrahim Sedef is using their honey-loving palates to his advantage Sedef, an agricultural engineer in #Turkey, is constantly trying to protect his hives from the many sweet-toothed bears in his neighborhood, on the country’s #BlackSea coast. His efforts got downright scientific when he began experimenting with various tactics to divert their paws away from his liquid gold Ever the scientist, Sedef eventually decided that if he couldn’t beat them, he could at least learn from them — particularly their expert taste for #honey So he set up a night-vision camera on his bee farm, and laid out a table with five varieties of honey for the bears to taste test Sedef told Turkish outlet DHA that the bears, in fact, had a very refined sense of smell that led them first to the rare Anzer honey from the Ballıköy plateau region, which they slurped up the most. According to Ahval News, the Turkish honey goes “1,000 liras ($171) per kilo,” and is considered “among the most expensive honeys on the market.” #Anzerhoney is the most famous of all Turkish honeys, said to be, of course, the best honey in the world Of course, New Zealanders say manuka honey is the best, Australians say it’s berringa honey, Indians say it’s Maharishi honey, Russians say it’s Bashkir honey, Arabs say it’s sidr honey, Malaysians say it’s gelam honey or tualang honey and the list can continue. Basically each country can pretend it produces the best honey in the world #FOODNINFO #FOODNETWORK #FOODANDWINE #TASTY #TOPCHEF #LEFOODING #huffpostgram #HUFFPOSTTASTE #EATER #LAEATS #EATERDENVER #NETFLIXFOOD #CHEFSROLL #chefsofinstagram #SAFOODIE #EATERLA #DISCOVERY #NATURE #ANIMALPLANET

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He installed photo trap cameras that could track the bears roaming his farm, mostly at night, and then set up a table topped with labeled bowls of different kinds of honey.

It worked.

The bears didn’t disturb the hives, since the honey was ready and waiting, and now Sedef – and the rest of us – know which honey a true connoisseur would prefer.

It turns out bears have expensive taste, because they devoured the Anzer honey first – it goes for around $150 a pound in Turkey – while leaving the cherry blossom honey untouched.

Now you know that the “good” honey really does taste much better – even the bears agree that you get what you pay for (even if they’re not technically paying).

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