The miniature McDonald’s beehive is the brainchild of set designer Nicklas Nilsson and is a collaboration between McDonald’s and NORD DDB, a Nordic creative agency, according to People.com.
McHive comes complete with a patio and outdoor seating, sleek wood paneling, two drive-thru windows and all the McDonald’s advertisements you’d expect to see plastered on the store’s windows. Bees enter the hive through the front entrance. Instead of a McFlurry machine or a deep-fryer, all you will see is a colony of buzzing bees between several “hive frames,” which hold the honeycomb within the hive enclosure.
The McHive is much more than a publicity stunt – although it would be really neat to see the beehive in person. Instead, the McHive is part of a bigger initiative by McDonald’s restaurants in Sweden that have put beehives on their roofs and wildflowers in their green spaces in an effort to save the bees.
Christina Richter, who runs a number of McDonald’s restaurants in the south of Sweden, really wanted to help the bees, reports New Atlas, and after a successful trial placing a hive on the roof of the McDonald’s in Stattena with the help of Duvestubbe apiary, three more restaurants are now getting rooftop hives. Each hive has 20,000 bees.
Christoffer Ronnblad, marketing director of McDonald’s Sweden, said: “We have a lot of really devoted franchisees who contribute to our sustainability work and it feels good that we can use our size to amplify such a great idea as beehives on the rooftops,” reports the Independent.
Since the start of the initiative to save the bees, McDonald’s franchises across Sweden have joined in the bee-saving efforts and McDonald’s hopes that their actions will spread internationally with the help of this new campaign.
Honeybees are dying out around the world at an alarming rate. Seven bee species have already gone extinct in the United Kingdom, and many more are at risk of going extinct.
In the United States, one in four bees species is at risk of extinction, according to the Earth Day Network. There are a number of causes for the decline in the world’s pollinators, from overuse of pesticides, disease, pollution, and loss of habitat, to monocultural agriculture, and competition from invasive species.
