Honey Nut Cheerios maker reveals plan to help bees

The makers of Honey Nut Cheerios have come to the aid of the beleaguered bees that are vital to this product.

Bees make honey, of course, and they pollinate the almonds that flavor the cereal. For about a decade, commercial hives have been dying off for reasons that remain a mystery.

General Mills announced this week that it will devote about 3,300 acres to wildflowers that can nourish the bees and possibly help them withstand various stresses.

Where will this happen? Amid fields of oats, which are the main ingredient in Cheerios and mainly grow in the Dakotas, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

“Bees need a variety of good nutrition in their diets, just like humans, and General Mills is about good nutrition,” said Jared Pippin, associate marketing manager for Cheerios, in a news release.

Oats themselves are not pollinated by bees, but the upper Great Plains and Midwest are a summer home to many beekeepers. They need to keep the colonies strong so they can be trucked in winter to Central Valley almond orchards and crops around the nation.

Some almond growers already are planting flowers that help nourish the bees before and after the nut-tree bloom.

General Mills will help its oat farmers sow wildflowers at field borders and other places amid the 60,000 acres that supply the Honey Nut brand. It also will try to protect bees from pesticides, one of the possible causes of the decline.

For more information, go to www.cheerios.com/weneedthebees.

In related news, an almond-industry group based in Ripon announced that it rebranded itself at a meeting this week.

The Almond Alliance of California is the new name for the Almond Hullers and Processors Association, which includes growers. The group will parallel the work of the Almond Board of California, with one key difference: It can do the lobbying from which the board is barred.

“Our message is very simple,” said President Kelly Covello. “The Almond Alliance of California is the only organization fully dedicated to advocating and protecting our members’ investment in the almond industry.”

Finally, the state has reached about 900,000 bearing acres of almonds, up 1.1 percent from 2015, the National Agricultural Statistics Service reported this week.

The growth rate has slowed in recent years, but almonds remain by far the top crop in the Northern San Joaquin Valley and a key part of California farming.

The agency on May 10 will make its first projection of the 2016 harvest, based on a phone survey of growers.

This story was originally published April 29, 2016 at 2:24 PM with the headline "Honey Nut Cheerios maker reveals plan to help bees."