--- title: Turkish Beekeeper Secretly Records Bears Taste-Testing Honey description: While normally animal testing is frowned upon, this particular form seeks okay. canonical: https://time.com/5664393/bear-beekeeper-video/ author: Melissa Locker article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2019-08-29T15:42:20.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T08:00:06.442Z og:title: Turkish Beekeeper Secretly Records Bears Taste-Testing Honey og:description: While normally animal testing is frowned upon, this particular form seeks okay. og:url: https://time.com/5664393/bear-beekeeper-video/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt09f9237991517e92/698a022886f68e34376ed7da/honeybee.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 5849 og:image:height: 3290 og:image:alt: honey dipper and bread og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Turkish Beekeeper Secretly Records Bears Taste-Testing Honey twitter:description: While normally animal testing is frowned upon, this particular form seeks okay. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt09f9237991517e92/698a022886f68e34376ed7da/honeybee.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Turkish Beekeeper Secretly Video Puts Insatiable Bears to Work Taste-Testing His Honey. 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Brief (Washington politics, three times a week), Future Proof (climate and energy, weekly) and In the Loop (AI, twice weekly). All are free at time.com/newsletters and together reach more than 1.1 million engaged readers. #### Which TIME newsletter should I subscribe to? It depends on what you follow. For a daily briefing, The Brief. For health, Health Matters. For Washington politics, D.C. Brief. For AI and technology, In the Loop. For climate and energy as a business story, Future Proof. For culture recommendations, Worth Your Time. For how TIME's journalism gets made, Inside TIME. Readers can select any combination at time.com/newsletters. #### Are TIME's newsletters free? Yes. All seven TIME newsletters are free to join at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes TIME's newsletters? TIME journalists write them. Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. by [Melissa Locker](https://time.com/author/melissa-locker/) ## Melissa Locker Aug 29, 2019 3:42 PM UTC  honey dipper and bread honey dipper and breadGetty images by [Melissa Locker](https://time.com/author/melissa-locker/) ## Melissa Locker Aug 29, 2019 3:42 PM UTC Bears, it seems, have very discerning taste. That’s the result of a not particularly scientific experiment undertaken by a Turkish [beekeeper](https://time.com/4885569/honeybee-population-increase/) who video taped local bears dipping into his [honey](https://time.com/5566237/is-honey-healthy/) stores. Beekeeper Ibrahim Sedef had been having a hard time keeping his honey out of the maws of bears looking to sate their sweet tooth. [According to English-language Turkish news outlet _TRT World_](https://twitter.com/trtworld/status/1164152672666169345), over the course of three years, Sedef estimates he may have lost “more than $10,000 worth of honey” to those rascally bears. He tried setting up decoys to lure the bears into eating things besides his honey stores, leaving out a buffet of apples, bread, persimmons, and decoy honey, but the bears just kept coming back and breaking into his stores. At some point, Sedef decided to try and figure out if there was a particular honey that the bears were particularly fond of. So he set up his cameras with night vision capabilities and an array of honey – flower, chestnut, and Anzer – and one bowl of cherry jam, for a taste test and let the [bears](https://time.com/5270214/does-pepper-spray-work-on-bears/) do their thing. After reviewing the footage, Sedef realized that the bears always opted for the Anzer honey, proving they have very good taste. [According to _The Guardian_](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/29/turkish-beekeeper-finds-thieving-bears-prefer-premium-honey), Anzer honey is “produced from the nectar of 90 flowers that grow only in the mountains of the Anzer plateau.” Thanks to that illustrious heritage, it’s an expensive honey, selling for as much as “$300 a kilogram”—and the bears loved it most of all. Seeing their discerning taste, Sedef decided to forget his losses. “Despite all this, when I see the footage, I forget all the harm they have done to me, and love them,” he [told](https://twitter.com/trtworld/status/1164152672666169345) _TRT World_. While normally animal testing is frowned upon, this particular form seeks okay. > [](https://twitter.com/TRConsuLA/status/1164222449124356097) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5664393/bear-beekeeper-video/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5664393/bear-beekeeper-video/"},"headline":"Turkish Beekeeper Secretly Video Puts Insatiable Bears to Work Taste-Testing His Honey. 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