Beekeeper Tricks Bear Raiding His Honey Hives Into Doing Market Research

Everyone knows bears love honey. Winnie the Pooh is a fictional example of that. But few of us have seen the ursine’s love of honey in action. One honeymaker in Turkey, however, has first-hand experience with a group of troublesome bears.

The bears have raided his honey hives near Turkey’s Trabzon-Surmene province for several years, leaving a trail of sticky destruction in their wake.

At first, agriculture engineer Ibrahim Sedef tried to dissuade them from raiding his honey production facility by offering them apples and other treats, but without success. One bear in particular – nicknamed “Big Bear” – kept coming back for the honey.

That’s when Sedef had an idea – he decided to employ Big Boy in his market research by setting up a blind tasting test.

He put out a selection of his honeys and jams and waited to see which of his  honeys Big Boy thought was best.

After multiple double blind trials, Big Boy always went for the rarest, most expensive Anzer honey (which can retail for $300 a jar!) first. The Anzer honey was closely followed by Chestnut, Flower, and Pine Wood honeys.

It should be noted that Big Boy never went for a taste of the low quality supermarket Cherry Jam made with corn syrup. Which just got to show, bears have very good taste in honey!

Despite the mischievous bears costing Sedef tens of thousands of dollars, he says he forgets all the harm they have done to him when he watches his surveillance footage and loves them.

Below is the original broadcast video, note: it is in Turkish language.

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