Let’s start the week with a light-hearted and sweet story ~ pun intended!
Cartoons teach children that bears love honey. And most of us have encountered Winnie the Pooh, the honey-loving bear, at some stage in our lives.
Ibrahim Sedef is a beekeeping professional (and agricultural engineer) in Trabzon, Turkey. He has been plagued lately by honey-obsessed bears. They are tearing up his bee colonies and stealing all the honey they can find.
He tried to save his hives by putting them into metal cages, then he tried to trick the mischievous bears by luring them away from the hives, leaving trails of fruit, honey and breadcrumbs.
Although the bears were clever, the beekeeper outsmarted them with some creative thinking. He set up cameras so he could track the bears as they tore through his apiary and studied how they operated. The bears were not fooled, and it seemed nothing was going to deter them! Check out what happened in this short (1:12 minute) video:
When he realized that bears are the ultimate honey connoisseurs, masters of knowing the best honey around, Ibrahim decided to turn the problem into an advantage. He turned the naughty bears into honey taste testers.
He set four honey samples out on a table for the bears to gorge themselves on. The bears didn’t let the clever beekeeper down. They rapidly revealed the best honey to him.
He observed that the bears were always drawn to the aroma and taste of Turkey’s famous Anzer honey first. Sometimes they didn’t even touch the cherry blossom honey. These bears have luxurious tastes, as their choice honey sells for around $300 per kilo, or $150 per pound.
The story doesn’t tell us what happened next. Did Ibrahim manage to make the bears leave his beehives alone? If there is an update soon, we'll share it with you here. Meanwhile, the story has gone viral, and the bears of Trabzon province in Turkey are almost as famous as Turkey's rare Anzer honey.
Have you had honey-obsessed bears steal your honey? If you have some strategies to share, please go to our Facebook page and tell us all about it!