McDonald s has opened a bee restaurant. It s the smallest fast food in the world

Yes, it is a marketing campaign. But done well, so it's worth writing about it. Her main heroes are bees - a species that we need.

McHive is a project prepared for Bee's Day by the McDonald's restaurant chain and the Swedish advertising agency NORD DDB. Relax, bees do not work in this fast-food. Miniature McDonald's is actually a very comfortable street, which was built for the charity organization Ronald McDonald. 10,000 dollars. obtained from the sale of this construction will be used to help these insects.

This is not the only bee initiative of the Swedish McDonalds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0LnCS08w3Q

It started with one local franchisee who decided to set up an apiary on the roof of his restaurant. He was followed by another Swedish McDonald's restaurants, whose number is constantly growing. The initiative also appealed to the network headquarters, which decided to support it through its foundation. Thanks to this, the bees will have a little better. The idea of ​​building bee hives in the city is not a new concept.

Initiatives similar to those carried out by the Swedish McDonalds appear all over the world. In this London, for example, about 250 million bees live - about 30 times as much as humans. The initiative is also quite good in Poland. In Warsaw, the first urban apiary was created in 2014 on the roof of the Regent Hotel (at that time the Hyatt). In Katowice, bees live on the roof of the Ferrari salon belonging to the Pietrzak Group. In Lublin, we can find beehives on the roof of the Center for the Meeting of Cultures in the very center of the city.

Help for bees

Such urban colonies of bees is a good way to increase the number of their populations, which - in a global perspective - is still decreasing. And it is largely through us. The three most important factors pointed out by scientists have long been unchanged: urbanization, climate change and the use of strong pesticides in the cultivation of plants. Within the European Union, the last issue concerns mainly neonicotinoids, a group of three pesticides used in agriculture in the EU: imidacloprid, clothianidin and thiamethoxam.

Research by the European Food Safety Authority shows that these measures are directly related to the Colony Collapse Disorder. In addition to death, these agents can also cause addiction to ... nicotine. The use of them was limited in 2013. Further restrictions were introduced in 2018 .

Now neonicotinoids can be used only in closed greenhouses. The representatives of Germany, Estonia, Ireland, Greece, Spain, France, Italy, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Austria, Slovenia, Sweden and Great Britain voted for further limitation of their use. Some scientists say it could be the last moment to introduce this ban. Over the past 25 years, the population of honey bees and other beneficial insects has fallen by 75% in some Member States.

The city is not so terrible

Urban apiaries do not seem such a ridiculous idea anymore, right? Contrary to appearances, the city is not such a terrible place from the point of view of bee families. Thanks to the urban vegetation that occurs on squares, in parks, balcony pots, gardens and cemeteries, bees do not complain about lack of food.

Interestingly - urban honeys are supposedly rich in flavor and are not polluted with urban air. Research carried out at the University of Agriculture in Krakow even stated that urban honey can be cleaner than that produced by rural bees.

Another city's plus is the diversity of plants here. Imagine bees from a quiet, peaceful village, around which most of the agricultural area is occupied by buckwheat, which blooms only for two weeks. And herbicides are used for growing it. In comparison with this perspective, the Royal Baths is a real haute cuisine. Also with a little good will, it's very easy to make bees feel in our cities like at home.

This is not the only animal species that turned the real jungle into this city. In the above-mentioned London, the local metro has long been terrorized by underground city mosquitoes called a bit of a London Underground mosquito for a joke (although it really originated before the construction of the London subway).

Many species have already evolved since moving to the urban agglomerations. Urban pepper moths have found, for example, that much more comfortable (and longer) in the city live without any fancy patterns on the wings and wear quite black. Many species of urban birds have learned to sing in higher frequencies, thanks to which they are able to break through urban noise.

Sydney, on the other hand, fancies Australian spiders, which researchers say University of Sydney are larger than in their natural environment. Nowadays, instead of Galapagos, Darwin would just rent a studio in a bigger city.

Bees in the city are needed.

We have not seen any significant changes in urban bees at the moment. The construction of urban hives has only recently started, so it will probably take some time before the bees begin to adapt more to urban life. It can not be ruled out that such a case has already occurred somewhere, but we do not know about it yet. For now, scientists have noted that cities are more diverse when it comes to bee varieties.

Regardless, however, it's worth to take bees to the cities. If we lead to the extinction of this species, we will have a lot of trouble. Researchers estimate that about 75 percent food consumed by us is a derivative of the work of pollinating insects. Therefore, they should be supported.

McDonald's has opened a bee restaurant. It's the smallest fast food in the world