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Sugar Puffs partners with Natural History Museum to spread the honey-goodness message

Big Bear's Managing Director, Mario Giannotta swapped business shirt and tie for a beekeeping suit at the Natural History Museum last month to officially mark the Sugar Puffs sponsorship deal with the London museum's largest living exhibition, the Wildlife Garden. The sponsorship deal with the museum is part of a £3.5 million nationwide campaign designed to switch parents and kids onto the honey-goodness brand message and raise awareness of the importance of bees and honey to our British way of life. The campaign, fronted by BBC wildlife presenter Bill Oddie, launches at a time when the numbers of British honeybees have dramatically dropped, by as much as 80% in some areas of the UK, feared to be due to a winter attack of "Colony Collapse Disorder." Both by sponsoring the Wildlife Garden at the Natural History Museum (the ideal bee-friendly garden) and by creating a "Wonderful World of Bees" teaching resource distributed to 5,000 primary schools across the country, Honey Monster aims to motivate the nation into boosting the bee population by creating their own "honeytastic", bee-friendly habitats. Throughout June and July, Bill will be travelling to schools across the UK to educate the next generation of beekeepers and wildlife conservationists about how we can all do our bit to help our humble honeybee. Sugar Puffs' sponsorship has enabled the Museum to feature a demonstration hive within the Wildlife Garden and is the Museum's first natural bee hive. The "bee tree" is an 8ft high tree trunk which offers the museum's visitors a bees'-eye view of a natural honeybee hive in action, giving them a better understanding of how bees work and honey is made. Now in its 10th year the Wildlife Garden is free to enter and is open from 12:00 - 17:00 from now until the end of October. The garden features a range of British lowland habitats and beautifully demonstrates the potential for wildlife conservation in the urban environment. Sugar Puffs' involvement with the cause does not end there. Now running on nearly 4 million packs of Sugar Puffs is a campaign to encourage the nation to get planting and create Bee Friendly habitats all over the country. On pack support runs from 25th April on 625g and 450g packs of Sugar Puffs nationwide. Each pack contains free "honeytastic habitat" stickers plus a send-off-to-get giveaway offering a free power plant kids containing dwarf sunflower seeds, plant pot, wall chart and measuring ruler plus stickers to personalise the flower pot. The severe drop in the honeybee population is a huge and growing issue for the UK, and Sugar Puffs hopes that with the customers' support attention can be drawn and action prompted to help boost the flagging numbers. Mario Giannotta, Managing Director, Big Bear Ltd says: "Honey-goodness is at the heart of the Sugar Puffs brand; Honey Monster's been telling us about the 'honey mummy' for over thirty years! Honeybees and the habitats which support them are necessary not only for giving Sugar Puffs their tasty honey goodness but also the survival of many of Britain's flora and fauna. In that respect the Natural History Museum shares our aim in educating generations old and young about the need to preserve and create bee-friendly habitats. As a family brand loved by both parents and kids, we are delighted to be working with the museum which attracts 3.3 million visitors each year and which for over 200 hundred years has played such a major part in our understanding and preservation of plants and animals." He adds: "Honey Monster's Honeytastic Habitats is the second honey-themed Sugar Puffs initiative we've launched this year. The campaign is running in tandem with Hive Action, launched in February, a fundraising campaign developed in association with UK charity Hives Save Lives to generate 5,000 hives for Africa. In Africa the power of honey is so great that one hive can save five lives. The Honeytastic Habitats campaign brings the honey-goodness message closer to home to educate our children about the role honey plays in British life and continues to educate our customers about the power of honey." Enquiries to 020 7462 7932 www.hiveaction.co.uk