The World’s Smallest McDonald’s Has Opened Its Doors—and It’s Worth Buzzing About
The world’s smallest McDonald’s franchise has opened its doors in Sweden, and it’s the bee’s knees—literally.
Instead of serving burgers and fries to thousands of hungry people, this McDonalds location will make room for a different type of important customer: bees. Aptly named the McHive, the to-scale mini-McDonald’s is a fully-functional beehive for thousands of bees.
The McHive comes complete with a patio and outdoor seating, sleek wood panelling, two drive-thru windows and all the McDonald’s advertisements you’d expect to see plastered on the store’s windows.
Take a look inside and you won’t find a McFlurry machine or deep-fryer, but a colony of buzzing bees between several “hive frames,” which hold the honeycomb within the hive enclosure. You can see exactly what the McHive looks like, inside and out, in the campaign’s video below.
A collaboration between McDonald’s and NORD DDB, a Nordic creative agency, the McHive was created to pay homage and draw attention to the several 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.
RELATED: 17 Species of Bees Have Already Gone Extinct in the UK — and Many More Are in Danger
Honey bees have been dying at an alarming rate in recent years—one in four bees species in the US are at risk of extinction, according to the Earth Day Network, and worldwide bee populations are in decline due to increased pesticide use, climate change, loss of habitat and biodiversity, among other factors.
Though it started with just a couple McDonald’s locations, franchises all across Sweden have now started to join in the bee-saving efforts, and McDonald’s hopes that their actions will spread internationally with the help of this new campaign.
RELATED VIDEO: Bee’s Added to The Endangered Species List For the First Time In The U.S.
The McHive was sold at auction for a whopping $10,000 on Tuesday, which was World Bee Day. All proceeds went to Ronald McDonald House charities.
