Cheerios is making a buzz about bees

Cereal’s mascot is missing from the box as General Mills starts awareness campaign

The world’s bee population is in crisis and Honey Nut Cheerios is coming to the rescue, minus its perky mascot.

The brand’s latest promotion, Bring Back the Bees, characterized as a cause marketing campaign, purports to inform Canadians about the global instability of bees, due to diseases, pesticides, flowerless landscapes and monolithic crop planting, and encourage them to plant 35 million bee-enticing wildflowers this spring.

Cereal lovers will find the brand’s longtime ambassador AWOL for the next six weeks.

“We took Buzz off the front of the box to bring awareness to fact the bees are disappearing and on the back we have a lot of information to help consumers understand why bees are important and what they can do and then driving them to the website so they can get their free seeds,” said Amanda Hsueh, associate marketing director at General Mills Canada.

“(Bees) provide not just honey . . . but a third of our food supply actually depends on their pollination.” AMANDA HSUEH ASSOCIATE MARKETING DIRECTOR AT GENERAL MILLS CANADA

Recipients are encouraged to plant the wildflower seeds “anywhere where flowers would help beautify the space and make it a bee-friendly area,” she said.

“They provide not just honey, like in our Honey Nut Cheerios, but a third of our food supply actually depends on their pollination, such as almonds, apples and even coffee.

“So they’re very important, but the bees are in trouble. We felt like we wanted to do something to help and we wanted to find a way to make sure all Canadians could do something to help.”

While Canadian Honey Council executive director Rod Scarlett appreciates that the seed planting will enhance environmental diversity that benefits bee health, he’s concerned that the campaign’s message is “an overstatement, I suppose, for advertising purposes that . . . casts a cloud over commercial bee keepers who have been quite successful in Canada and are bucking the trend in North America and in most of the world by increasing numbers.

“In North America the numbers may be dropping, but in Canada, in fact, the number of bees have been growing for nearly a decade,” he said. “We have numbers drop in some regions . . . in Ontario with over wintering losses.”

Third-generation beekeeper Andre Flys of Nobleton’s Pioneer Brand Honey is pleased to see a company addressing bee well-being.

“I’m happy that they’re promoting bees; that they’re promoting pollinators; if it benefits them, that’s fine with me; it’s getting the word out there; people are talking about it; they’re handing out seeds.

“No one thing here is going to save the day, but the more ears that get tuned into the situation, the more likely we’re going to end up with a better situation.”