Originally published 2020-03-03.
Ibrahim Sedef, a beekeeper in Trabzon province on Turkey’s Black Sea coast, had lost honey to brown bears for years. In 2019 he turned the problem into an experiment: he set out a picnic table with several labelled honeys, filmed the bears at night, and found that they went for Anzer honey, one of the most expensive in Turkey, before anything else. The footage spread worldwide that August.
It is a charming story, but there is more to it than a bear with expensive taste. Here is what Sedef actually did, what the clips can and cannot tell us about bears, and why feeding wildlife is not a recommended way to protect hives.
How the honey test worked
Sedef is an agricultural engineer who keeps bees in the forested hills of Trabzon. Before the tasting table, he had tried the usual defences. He locked hives inside metal housings and left out fruit, bread and cheaper honey, hoping the bears would fill up on those instead. Some hives were still broken into.
To understand what he was dealing with, he installed night-vision camera traps. Then he went a step further, setting out small bowls of different honeys on a wooden table, each with a handwritten label, and recording what happened overnight. According to Gizmodo’s report, he also moved the trays and tables around between sessions, so that the bears’ choice was not simply the bowl nearest to them.
The first frame shows a group of bears climbing over a metal enclosure on the farm. In the second, Sedef pours honey into the labelled bowls before nightfall.
What the bears chose
The labels visible in the photos include Anzer balı (Anzer honey), çiçek balı (wildflower honey), kestane (chestnut), vişne (sour cherry) and çam balı (pine honey). Sedef told the Turkish news agency DHA that the bears always went to the Anzer honey first, and sometimes did not touch the flower honey at all.
In these night shots a large bear leans on the table and works along the row of bowls, nose down in the one labelled Anzer. The camera’s infrared light is what makes its eyes glow.
Here the table is set with five honeys. Sedef said five bears visited regularly, arriving after their winter rest around mid-March and staying until November.
He ran a similar test with bread. The bears preferred the local whole-wheat bran bread of Trabzon, then sourdough, and left supermarket bread for last. He said they had also started eating hazelnuts, a major crop in the region.
Why Anzer honey is so prized
Anzer honey comes from the Anzer plateau in the İkizdere district of Rize province, high in the mountains east of Trabzon. Bees there forage on a dense mix of alpine wildflowers over a short summer, and yields are small. That scarcity, plus a reputation built over decades, makes it one of the most expensive honeys in the world. Reports in 2019 put the price at about 1,000 Turkish lira, roughly $171, per kilo. In 2021 it received a protected geographical indication in Turkey, so only honey from the defined area may carry the name.
Older viral posts claimed that two pounds sold for more than $300. Prices vary with the harvest and the seller, but the figure reported at the time of the story was considerably lower.
Sedef sits at the tasting table in daylight, holding up two honey frames, with the metal-wrapped hive beside him. The close-up shows the jar of Anzer honey that the bears chose first.
Can bears really taste the difference?
Brown bears have an excellent sense of smell, and honey is a natural part of their diet. They readily raid bee yards, eating both the honey and the protein-rich bee larvae. So it is plausible that they could tell honeys apart by scent. Still, a few nights of video are not a controlled taste test. Freshness, aroma strength, how much each bowl held and what a bear ate the night before could all influence the choice.
Emrah Çoban, a scientist with the Turkish conservation group Kuzey Doğa, told reporters that the bears probably do not care much about brands and that long-term study would be needed before drawing conclusions. In other words, the clip shows a preference on those nights, not a verdict on which honey is best for people.
Living alongside bears
Turkey is home to one of the larger brown bear populations in Europe and western Asia, estimated at several thousand animals, many of them in the forests of the Black Sea mountains. Despite their reputation, brown bears get most of their energy from plants such as berries, grasses and roots. Hives are a high-reward exception, which is why beekeepers in bear country face the same problem from Romania to Japan.
Sedef said he had lost thousands of dollars’ worth of honey over the years, yet he also said that watching the footage made him forget the damage and love the animals. That mixed feeling is common among people who share land with large wildlife.
His tasting table, though, is not a model to copy. Regularly offering food teaches bears to link people with an easy meal. Elsewhere in the world, such as at Yellowstone’s former open garbage dumps, food-conditioned bears lost their fear of humans, which ultimately puts both people and bears at risk. Bear specialists generally recommend electric fencing around apiaries, secure hive stands and compensation schemes for losses, rather than feeding.
How people reacted
The video drew plenty of comments when it was shared online. A selection of the replies:
Some readers joked about picnic baskets; an agricultural engineer said posts like this show what the profession really does; another called it the only acceptable kind of animal testing.
One commenter praised Anzer honey’s mountain flora, while another made a sensible point: animals’ taste preferences are not ours, much as dog treats would not appeal to people. The rest simply enjoyed the idea of bears as influencers.
Sources: Photos and video: Ibrahim Sedef via DHA, dha.com.tr; Gizmodo, August 2019: Turkish bears caught on camera taste-testing honey; Hürriyet Daily News, 2021: Turkey’s Anzer honey gets geographical indication; Wikipedia: Brown bear; Wikipedia: Eurasian brown bear.
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