Honey Nut Cheerios Bee ‘Disappears’ to Help Bring Awareness of Declining Bee Population

If you brought a box of Honey Nut Cheerios in Canada, you will notice that something is missing on the cover.

The cereal brand is temporarily dropping Buzz the Bee from boxes in Canada as part of a marketing campaign to draw attention to the declining bee population worldwide. According to SOS-Bees, the bee population has gone down tremendously thanks in part to “industrial agriculture, parasites/pathogens and climate change.”  Bees play a critical role in our ecosystem as a third of our food depends on their pollination. Without them, food production will suffer tremendously.

According to Adweek, Director of Marketing for General Mills Emma Eriksson, stated that this is the first time that Honey Nut Cheerios has taken the bee out of the box.

“One-third of the foods we depend on for our survival are made possible by the natural pollination work that bees provide. With ongoing losses in bee populations being reported across Canada, we wanted to leverage our packaging to draw attention to this important cause and issue a call to action to Canadians to help plant 35 million wildflowers—one for every person in Canada,” Eriksson added.

The brand is starting a #BringBackTheBees hashtag on its social media pages, creating more awareness of the situation.

They are also giving away free wildflower seed packs if you sign up on its website.

A TV spot and online video were recently released. You can check out the video below.

The Bring Back the Bees campaign will run from now until July. There is no word if the campaign will reach the United States and other countries.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fbMQUVYuRQ