Why Do Bears Eat Honey?
Bears love sweet-tasting things. And honey is one of the sweetest treats a bear can find. Bears can find honey by smelling. The bees make their honey from flowers. So the hive and honey smell sweet. When bears find a hive, they use their huge claws to scoop out the honey.
The bear’s thick fur protects it from bee stings. After bears get the brood comb and perhaps some honey, they hurry away and shake bees out of their fur like they shake water. Bears do enjoy a snack of honey when they can find a hive.
What a bear is really after when he finds a beehive are the bees and larvae inside. Both brown and black bears raid beehives. Bears are “omnivores,” which means that they’re animals who eat both meat and plants. By eating bees, bears get lots of protein.
Unlike Winnie the Pooh, real bears don’t only eat honey. Polar bears eat mostly fat and meat, including seals and other marine mammals. Grizzly and black bears eat mostly vegetation, insects, berries, and meat, especially salmon and young moose, caribou and deer.