In case you haven’t noticed, there has recently been a big change in one of the countries most popular cereal boxes. Buzz Bee the cartoon bee has mysteriously vanished off the surface of the Cheerios box. For myself, this was kind of hard to fathom, being that Buzz is one of the claims to fame for Cheerios and the company General Mills. To find the reason why BuzzBee is missing I took to the Cheerios website. The first page of the website shows Buzz’s outline with the hashtag #BringBacktheBees. Upon further investigation, I came to find that Buzz is missing in order to shed light on the current bee crisis. The bee crisis is the rapid decline of the honeybees as well as many other types in population which is causing flowers to not be pollinated. This may seem like a small issue to some, however, many of the foods you eat on a daily basis like fruits and vegetables rely on bee pollination in order to grow and be healthy. The Cheerios cereal having Buzz the honeybee as their mascot makes them a perfect organization to help promote #BringBacktheBees. In order to help a few months ago, Cheerios began sending out free packets of wildflowers for people to plant to help bring the bee population back up. Although this seems like a great idea because bees are the number one pollinator, some of the seeds included in the packet such as Forget-Me-Not's are banned in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

that wherever these plants are planted they will grow out of control and take over when planted. Plus, not every plant is universal some plants are native to different parts of the U.S. so if you plant a non-native plant like a California Buckeye, which is grown in California, and plant it in Massachusetts, it won’t grow well if at all. This is because the climate and weather on the two coasts can be quite different. Nonnative flowers and plants can also be harmful to the local bees who are not used to the pollen of the foreign flowers. Rather than plant these sometimes-harmful wildflower seeds, people should support the creation of pollinator habitats and local beekeepers which Cheerios is also involved with. General Mills, the corporation that produces Cheerios has an estimated goal of 3,300 acres of wild flowers to be planted by the year 2020.

Companies like Burts Bees is also helping to raise the bee population. Although 3,300 is a huge number and no single person can produce that many flowers you can be a smaller part by planting even a small garden of native wildflowers for bees to pollinate.