Ibrahim Sedef is a beekeeper from Trabzon, Turkey, who came up with a somewhat whimsical, and creative use for his bear problem… he turned them into unwitting honey-tasters.
And yes, I am very aware that this may read like something from a beloved children’s cartoon, or a grimm childhood fable with a deeper message, but I promise you that it is real.
Bears pose a lot of problems for beekeepers as they will often cause considerable damage when looking to get a taste of the sweet nectar.
However, due to the nature of bears being, well bears, it isn’t exactly smart to go out and shoo them away necessarily
So, when Ibrahim Sedef discovered that bears were trashing his hives at night like drunk teenagers at a parent-less house-party, he eventually decided to find a more creative solution to the situation.
After a long fought war with the adorable pests, including putting steel cages around the hives and tempting them away with other food products, Mr. Sedef began using the bears for his own gain.
According to NTV , Mr. Sedef set up a series of night-vision cameras, and began setting out a collection of large honey samples for the bears at night.
What transpired was a very hungry, and very large, bear coming along to sample some of Mr. Sedef’s wares.
There was one honey, as it turned out, that the bears would repeatedly go for over the rest. It was a type of honey called Anzer honey, a honey said to have curative powers according to NTV .
No matter how he moved the samples around, the bears always went for the Anzer honey, proving them to have quite a discerning palate.
It is clear that bears have expensive tastes (a sentence that I absolutely relished the writing of) as the Anzer honey is the most expensive of all of the honeys on Mr. Sedef’s bear-orientated tasting menu.
1 pound of the Anzer honey which the bears favored can be sold for around $150 if it’s good enough quality.
Reading about Mr. Sedef’s life setting up picnics for bears and selling honey (which is apparently more expensive than some of my most prized possessions), makes me want to move to turkey and start an apiary. It’s just a shame that I’m terrified of Bees.
The bears apparently weren’t as interested in the cheaper cherry blossom jams that Mr. Sedef left out for them.
I hope that on the bottles of his honey he now considers putting a testimonial from the bears.
100% of Turkish bears said of our product: “spurious huffing, and satisfied bear sounds”
Mr. Sedef’s unique, and positively whimsical relationship with his bears has captured the internet’s hearts, especially his new appreciation of the bear’s position.
Speaking to DHA , Mr. Sedef explained his newfound love for his furry taster:
“Ultimately he is trying to feed [himself] […] When you watch the images, you forget the loss, I love them.”
Mr. Sedef’s method of testing the honey may be unorthodox, but who else would be better for taste-testing honey… I’ve seen enough cartoons to know that it’s bears!
The story has been, as you can imagine, tickling the internet’s wholesome muscles, with many people expressing their thanks to Mr Sedef for starting this bear’s career as an influencer.
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One Reddit user also posted: “Joke’s on him, the bear is a big influencer on Bear Insta and is using this to persuade other beekeepers to give him freebies”
Hopefully Mr. Sedef’s bears don’t go around telling the other bears about the free samples he gives out otherwise he could find himself overrun with the fluffy predators looking for some of his expensive honey… this man literally lives the life of a cartoon character.
Personally, I think the heartwarming story of Mr. Sedef’s newfound friendship with his pesky bears is a much better story to tell kids than Goldilocks, I always hated that story!
So, when your kid is looking for a bedtime story, don’t tell them a story about someone shamelessly stealing porridge, tell them about the man who feeds his bears honey to make sure its up to scratch!
