Researchers at Cornell University in New York State have documented one of the most significant aggregations of mining bees in the world. An estimated 5.5 million regular mining bees (Andrena regularis) have been unearthed in East Lawn Cemetery, close to the university campus in the town of Ithaca.
The discovery was made by Rachel Fordyce, a lab technician in Cornell’s entomology department, who, to ease the sting of parking charges, had left her car in a nearby plaza and walked across the cemetery to work.
Having noticed a business of bees beside her feet, Rachel collected a jar of specimens and took them into the laboratory to confirm identification.
It is estimated that around 90% of bee species are solitary, meaning that they do not associate with each other unless it is for courtship or mating.
Male solitary bees have a typically short lifespan, the primary purpose of which is to mate. The females, having mated, will build a nest in which to lay their fertilised eggs, and to do this many species will dig small burrows with a series of underground chambers.
In a well-drained location, which has suitable substrate for burrowing and plentiful food nearby, mining bees will form large, non-social colonies, also known as aggregations.
Andrena regularis was first recorded in East Lawn Cemetery in the early 1900s, a couple of decades after the cemetery was founded. Aside from interment, the soil within the cemetery will remain relatively undisturbed, and with Cornell Orchards a 500m buzz away, the bees of East Lawn have a rich food source from which to gather pollen and nectar to take back to their developing larvae.
Steven T Hoge, first author of a study published in the peer-reviewed journal, Apidologie, observed, “This species overwinters as adults, which is relatively rare, and that’s part of the reason why they come up out of the ground so early in spring, timed to the apple bloom.”
Andrena regularis typically emerge in April in the humid continental climate of New York State. This knowledge allowed researchers to employ emergence traps, small mesh tents that cover around a single square metre of ground and that funnels the insects into a glass jar.
During a six-week period in the spring of 2023, 3,251 insects were collected from the cemetery in this manner, with Andrena regularis the dominant species. This enabled estimates to be made for the entire colony, with 5.5 million bees within 1.5 acres (0.61 hectares).
“I’m sure there are other large bee aggregations that exist around the world that we just haven’t identified,” Steve Hoge observed, “but in terms of what is in the literature, this is one of the largest.”
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