It’s an age-old story, but beekeepers in eastern Finland are having a tougher time than ever in stopping bears from stealing honey.
This summer honey producers in North Karelia say that honey-seeking bears have been digging under electric fences and even knocking down trees to get at the sweet stuff.
Harri Tervonen from Kitee on the Russian border has been beekeeping since the 1970s. He says bears have always tried to nab honey, but that the level of damage is now particularly high.
Tervonen estimates that he’s lost about 30 hives this year alone at his farm in nearby Tohmajärvi.
"It [the bear] tried to get under there, then broke the corner post and ate a couple of honeycombs. That’s a cunning bear," he said.
With hunting on hold, more bears show up
Tervonen and fellow Tohmajärvi beekeeper Veijo Mantsinen have noticed an increase in the local bear population over the past couple of years.
Experts agree that there have been more encounters between bears and humans since 2023, when bear hunting was suspended in most of Finland, except the reindeer herding zone that covers roughly the northern third of the country.
Bear hunting has been on hold due to legal challenges from conservation groups, but the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry is preparing legislation to allow quota hunting outside the reindeer husbandry area.
"Socially, economically and ecologically undesirable"
Last week, the ministry sent out a draft bill for comment, noting that Parliament recently called for regional quota hunting rules to allow for exceptions to bear protection. It proposes that hunting should be allowed on a limited basis throughout the country from 20 August to 31 October.
The growth in the bear population and the hunting ban have created "a socially, economically and ecologically undesirable situation that cannot be changed by safety and damage-based exemptions alone," the ministry said last Friday.
"At the current growth rate, the bear population outside Finland's reindeer herding area will likely double by 2030 if bears are not hunted," it added.
The Finnish Beekeepers' Association supports the plan, noting that damage to commercial hives has increased significantly. It argues that resumed hunting is the only way to secure beekeepers’ livelihoods.
Tervonen and Mantsinen say that they have nothing against bears in principle, but that the damage must be brought under control somehow.
"I’d be willing to support some kind of hunting, now that bears haven’t been killed for many years," Mantsinen says.
Testing, testing electric fences
In addition to hunting, Tervonen and Mantsinen hope to get more help from researchers. University of Helsinki doctoral researcher Kasper Mickos is studying the effectiveness of various types of electric fences around their bee yards.
Mickos is writing a doctoral dissertation on bear-human coexistence. He is studying issues such as how often bruins visit bee yards and how electric fences can prevent damage.
Electric fencing is, in principle, a good way to prevent damage to apiaries, he says.
"If a bear has never tasted honey before and gets an electric shock, it will probably remember that it's not worth coming here," he tells Yle.
But if the bear realises what kind of reward awaits on the other side of a fence, the situation gets trickier.
Mickos says that bears can dig under fences, reach over them and even do "grounding".
"Bears often try to knock small trees onto fences to re-route the electrical charge into the ground," he says.
If a suitable solution is found, that could save keepers a lot of money.
"The value of bee damage in Finland last year was 250,000 euros," says Mickos, adding there have been hundreds of thousands of euros of damage annually over the past several years.
