Plant-Insect Ecosystems
10-Minute Paper
Deanna Smid (she/her/hers)
Associate Professor
Brandon University
Brandon, Manitoba, Canada
As Colony Collapse Disorder has been in the public consciousness for more than a decade now, “save the bees” has become a popular and urgent mantra. Many corporations have touted the slogan as well, from McDonalds to Hagen-Dasz to Pornhub. In Canada, General Mills and Honey-Nut Cheerios have become almost synonymous with bee protection, thanks to their marketing campaign, hashtag, and website popularizing the imperative, “Bring back the bees.” In 2018 Honey Nut Cheerios partnered with Canadian bookseller Indigo to distribute 100, 000 “free” copies of a children’s picture book entitled Bella and Jack Bring back the Bees. Customers had to spend a minimum of $25 online at Chapters-Indigo, and Paulette Bourgeois and Josée Bisaillon’s didactic “save the bees” book could be theirs without charge. Bella and Jack Bring Back the Bees joins a large and growing number of eco-children’s books (such as Save the Bees by Bethany Stahl, Betsy Buglove Saves the Bees by Catherine Jacob, and 50 Ways to Save the Honeybees (And Change the World) by J. Scott Donahue) that adjure their young readers to feel positive affect for bees, to construct an identity alongside bees, and to therefore feel a response-ability to save the bees. The aims of such books are commendable: they inspire a love of bees and a concern for the wellbeing of bees and pollinators, but I argue that they do so by unfairly placing responsibility on their young readers and by providing a “solution” that ignores structural inequalities and promotes consumerism.