Honey Nut Cheerios has removed its bee mascot BuzzBee from cereal boxes in the U.S. and Canada, in order to highlight the dwindling numbers of bees.

The General Mills-owned brand is using the blank space where the bee should be to encourage consumers to plant over 100 million wildflowers this year, in order to ensure a more bee-friendly world. The campaign, #BringBackTheBees, invites families to order and plant free seeds from Vesey's Seeds by visiting the campaign website.

The brand points out that bees have experienced an unprecedented scale of habitat loss, with more than nine million acres of grass and prairie land converted to crop land since 2008. Approximately 30 percent of all ingredients in General Mills' products rely on pollination.

Susanne Prucha, director of marketing for Cheerios, said in a statement: "As a General Mills cereal built around nutrition, helping pollinators get the key nutrition they need through fun, family-friendly activities like planting wildflowers is a natural fit."