--- 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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The Brief is available free at time.com/newsletters, where readers can select it along with any of TIME's other six newsletters. There is no subscription required to receive it. #### Is The Brief free? Yes. The Brief is a free daily email newsletter from TIME. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes The Brief? The Brief is led by editor Richard Hall and draws on reporting from TIME's newsroom. Every edition is assembled by TIME editors rather than generated automatically. 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 bread Getty 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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