If you've strolled down the cereal aisle at the grocery store recently, you might have noticed something odd: Buzz the Bee is missing from the Honey Nut Cheerios box.
In his place is a white Buzz-shaped outline, holding a packet of flower seeds, and hovering above are the words: "Help bring back the bees." The cereal box redesign is part of a campaign that General Mills launched this month to raise awareness about declining bee and other pollinator populations in the U.S. and Canada.
The heart of the campaign is a push to get people across North America to plant wildflower seeds in their backyards and community spaces. Within one week, the company gave away 1.5 billion bee-friendly wildflower seeds. The idea is that more wildflowers will mean more food and shelter for our overwrought bees.
We're big fans of protecting pollinators. Statistics prove their value: Bees pollinate one-third of our crops — that's about $15 billion of commercially grown food including apples, berries and almonds — according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. U.S. honeybees create $150 million worth of honey each year.
Yet bees are disappearing. From April 2015 to April 2016, beekeepers lost 44 percent of their honeybee colonies. A U.S. Agriculture Department survey found that it was the second year in a row that beekeepers lost as many bees during the summer as they did during the winter.
Honeybees aren't the only ones hurting. On Jan. 11, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the rusty patched bumblebee (yes, it's as cute as its name sounds) as an endangered species — the first North American wild bee to be added to the list. Its population has plunged nearly 90 percent since the late 1990s. Of the 47 species of bees native to the U.S. and Canada, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature says more than a quarter face a risk of extinction from pesticide poisoning, climate change, disease and habitat loss.
So if General Mills wants to launch a campaign to bring back the bees, that's great, right? Well, not exactly.
Here's the stinger: Some of the wildflowers in the seed packets are invasive — or at least nonnative — in much of the United States.
As Kayri Havens, senior director of ecology and conservation at the Chicago Botanic Garden, explains, General Mills has a well-intentioned campaign, but "if you want to do something for pollinators for the long-term, it's better to plant some species that are native to your region and perennial."
