A hungry bear stole a box of beehive from the back of a farmer's home.

CCTV footage shows the black bear pulling a hive filled with honeycomb from the bottom of a pile in Hubei, China, on July 20.

It made a mess when the stack toppled over before fleeing with its loot.

The farmer said wild animals often raided his hives, so he set up a camera, thinking it was boars that kept ransacking his supplies.

However, it turned out that bears had been stealing his honey, and almost a hundred hives were missing.

He said: ‘That bear also ate the bees. They were gone. I have never seen this many bears in one area. I don't know if they are staying together. I hide whenever one comes near, they are reallly dangerous.'

The bear sighting was reported to local authorities, and two juveniles were found nearby in the woods.

Asian black bears are listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List and a protected species in China.

They prefer to live in forested areas where they spend a lot of time in trees and, as a result, are threatened by deforestation as well as poaching for their body parts, which are used in traditional Chinese medicine.