Buzz the Bee is a honey fanatic. Whether he’s traveling through mazes on the back of a cereal box, zipping around in a TV commercial, or just hanging out on a t-shirt, Buzz is usually wielding a honeycomb stick.
But Buzz’s future is at risk and, and, with him, the honey used for the cereal brand he loves: Honey Nut Cheerios.
So General Mills has started a campaign to protect bees like the popular cereal’s mascot, Buzz, called #BringBackTheBees. The company is giving out 100 million free packs of wildflower seeds from wildlife brand Veseys to make the world more bee-friendly. More than 71 million seeds have been distributed so far for flowers such as poppy, flax, baby blues, and forget-me-nots.
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The wildflowers will provide essential food and nutrients, something that bees have had a hard time obtaining in recent years.
“We have a big goal - 3,300 acres,” said Tom Rabaey, Principal Agronomist of General Mills. “I think everybody can agree that by planting more habitat, we’re going to do a lot of good.”
Even though Buzz’s fellow bees have been around for more than 50 million years, they’ve been dying by the millions around the world, poisoned and weakened by a range of environmental factors — chemicals, pests, climate change, and more. The syndrome called “colony collapse disorder” kills whole colonies at a clip and has terrified beekeepers everywhere. In 2015, 42% of bee colonies collapsed.
To highlight this mass disappearance, Honey Nut Cheerios has removed Buzz from the cereal box, replacing him with a ghostly cut-out silhouette.
General Mills removes bee from Honey Nut Cheerios box to increase pollinator awareness. https://t.co/hHFTsHOSbapic.twitter.com/poLdAuOb4h
— Star Tribune (@StarTribune) March 9, 2017
Recently, honey bees were about to be placed on the endangered species list in the US, but president Donald Trump blocked the designation.
Without bees, a lot more than Cheerios would disappear. By some accounts, a third of all food consumed by humans — such as coffee, almonds, apples, avocados, and broccoli — is made possible by bees that pollinate crops. They add more than $15 billion in value to the US economy each year.
Read More: ‘Small But Mighty’ Bumblebee Added to Endangered Species List
The wildflower campaign includes lots of fascinating facts about bees — including on their face recognition abilities, preference for urban settings, and color vision — and provides extensive instructions for how to effectively plant flowers.
If all goes well, Buzz’s honeycomb will never go dry and you’ll be able to enjoy a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios with almond milk in the years ahead.