Several million bees discovered under a cemetery in the United States, one of the largest…

Researchers estimate that 5.5 million bees nest in the soil of the Ithaca cemetery. Surprised by this discovery, they call to protect these nesting sites.

“I was completely stunned when we did the calculations,” one of the study’s co-authors said. Researchers from Cornell University estimated that nearly 5.5 million bees, of the species Andrena regularis, lived under the East Lawn cemetery in the city of Ithaca, located in the state of New York, in the United States.

This study, conducted in 2023, was published on Monday, April 13 in the scientific journal Apidologie. “I’m sure there are other large gatherings of bees around the world that we simply haven’t identified yet, but according to what is in the scientific literature, this is one of the largest,” said Steve Hoge, the study’s lead author, as reported by DiscoverWildlife, a BBC magazine.

While in the collective imagination bees nest in trees, scientists indicate that about 70% of bee species in the United States actually live underground. “I have seen published estimates of hundreds of thousands of bees aggregating. But I never imagined it would be 5.56 million bees,” researcher Bryan Danforth added to Scientific American. For comparison, the city of New York has about 8.8 million inhabitants.

“Graveyards as shelters”

Between March 30 and May 16, 2023, the Cornell University team set up ten emergence traps, small net tents used to contain bees, in the cemetery. By counting the number of bees coming out of the ground per square meter, they estimated that there were between 3.1 million and 8 million in total on the site.

“This study enriches our knowledge of bee ecology and underscores the potential importance of cemeteries as shelters for populations of bees nesting in the soil,” the researchers wrote in their publication.

“If we do not preserve nesting sites and someone covers them with asphalt, we could lose 5.5 million bees that are important pollinators in an instant,” Bryn Danforth added to the Cornell Chronicle.

Indeed, the cemetery soils are relatively preserved environments, particularly due to low pesticide use. Additionally, the orchards at Cornell, located about 500 meters from the cemetery, provide abundant food sources for bees to forage pollen and nectar. East Lawn cemetery is therefore an ideal refuge.