This Paper Is Designed to Feed Bees

The world's bees are in danger. Pesticides, disease, and habitat and food source loss have caused bee populations to dwindle for years. To bring back these vital pollinators, one company is proposing an unusual solution: paper.

The biodegradable Bee Saving Paper is made with glucose and contains seeds from the bee-feeding flower lacy phacelia (also known as purple tansy). Launched by the Warsaw-based marketing agency Saatchi and Saatchi IS and City Bees, an organization that advocates for bees in urban communities, the paper is also covered in a biodegradable UV paint that, to bees, looks like a meadow full of pollen sources.

The idea is that bees will land on the paper, grab a glucose snack—similar to what beekeepers feed their hives to help them survive the winter—and fly away. The company describes the paper as being "like an energy drink for bees" to help them fly farther on their journeys to find food. As counterintuitive as it seems, the paper is designed not to be used and recycled, but left out in nature. The paper will eventually fully biodegrade, leaving behind seeds that will grow into the kinds of flowers bees love.

The paper could be used in paper plates, bags, coffee cup sleeves, or other disposable products (though the creators don't really say how that might work—would the bees come up and land on your coffee cup?). A Polish beekeeper named Łukasz Kaczorowski is already using it for honey-jar labels.

When it comes to helping bee populations increase, these sheets are a small-scale intervention whose results remain to be seen. But bees can use all the help they can get.