{"id":311198,"date":"2026-07-31T22:50:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T22:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/311198\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T22:50:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T22:50:10","slug":"millions-of-miner-bees-in-ithaca-cemetery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/311198\/","title":{"rendered":"Millions of miner bees in Ithaca cemetery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Millions and millions of bees have made a home at the East Lawn Cemetery in Ithaca, just outside of Cornell University.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re called Andrena Regularis, a solitary nesting bee that lives in holes dug in soft, sandy soil \u2014 something the East Lawn Cemetery has plenty of.<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess it\u2019s great for the bees, this is home to them,\u201d Kevin Morse said, the cemeteries superintendent.<\/p>\n

\"Bryan<\/p>\n

Bryan Danforth at East Lawn Cemetery with a collection of bees. (Spectrum News\/Natalie Mooney)<\/p>\n

In 2023, Cornell University entomology professor Bryan Danforth<\/a>\u00a0and his crew of researchers conducted a series of tests to determine an understanding of the population size.<\/p>\n

This year, they published their findings: 5.5 million bees<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 a number Danforth says is likely an underestimate.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did some statistical manipulations where we kind of permuted the data and looked at how that changed the numbers and we came up with a range of 3 to 8 million bees,\u201d Danforth explained.<\/p>\n

Even if it isn\u2019t 8 million, Danforth says a bee aggregation of this size could very well be the largest in the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m certain that there are larger aggregations of bees out there,\u201d Danforth said, \u201cBut if you just take the published literature that people have done, the thorough study of estimating population size, this is the top, 5.5 million bees.\u201d<\/p>\n

While so many bees may sound scary to some, it\u2019s important to note that Andrena Regularis don\u2019t sting.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never gotten stung once,\u201d Morse confirms.<\/p>\n

Danforth says it\u2019s because, unlike social bees, they don\u2019t have a queen, hive or honey to protect. Instead, these solitary bees live alone in their burrows, lay eggs, and spend the days collecting pollen for their nests.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are hardworking, single mothers, these are bees that are going to work,\u201d Danforth said. \u201cWork as hard as they can for the month or so of the adult lifespan that they\u2019ve got.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A ground nesting bee peeks out from her burrow. (Spectrum News\/Natalie Mooney)<\/p>\n

Their lifespan is short, but in that time, they make a big difference. Andrena Regularis are crucial spring pollinators.<\/p>\n

The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation<\/a>\u00a0says protecting them is key to protecting ecological health.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of our wild flowers, all of our native flowering trees, it\u2019s not honey bees doing that, it\u2019s native bees,\u201d Executive Director of the Xerces Society Scott Black said. \u201cAnd ground nesting bees are one of the main groups, so they\u2019re really important.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both Black and Danforth say that cemeteries are ideal places for conservation efforts. Though they may be places for the dead, they\u2019re often found to be teeming with life. Danforth says it\u2019s because they\u2019re protected from development by property, zoning, and preservation laws \u2014 which keeps them widely undisturbed and in many cases pesticide free.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not going to develop this place. This is not going to become a, you know, shopping center,\u201d Danforth said, \u201cSo it\u2019s protected, and it\u2019s protected mostly by the dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"5.5<\/p>\n

5.5 million bees call a cemetery in Ithaca home. (Spectrum News\/Natalie Mooney)<\/p>\n

Cemeteries are just one place where these large aggregations of ground nesting bees can be found. Danforth says his team are engaging the public in a community science project<\/a>\u00a0to document bee nesting aggregations and individual bee nests so experts can identify the bees and add the nesting sites to a database.<\/p>\n

Once they know where they\u2019re nesting, Danforth says they can then begin to protect and study them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Millions and millions of bees have made a home at the East Lawn Cemetery in Ithaca, just outside…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311199,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[257,231,6314,9,11,10,49,51,50,12,200],"class_list":["post-311198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-central-ny","tag-human-interest","tag-natalie-mooney","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-news","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}