Cornell Documents 5.5 Million Subterranean Bees in New York Cemetery

Q: Since the Project GNBee launch, what new pollinator hotspots have citizen scientists uncovered worldwide?

No specific new “hotspots” have been publicly detailed yet beyond broad categories of sites reported through Project GNBee. What Cornell and related project materials do say is that, since the initiative launched in June 2023, citizen scientists have logged more than 5,000 observations on iNaturalist from places ranging from Ithaca, New York, to Madagascar. Those reports show ground-nesting pollinator activity turning up in a wide range of everyday settings rather than only in protected natural areas. The newly documented nesting sites include trails, schoolyards, baseball diamonds, outdoor café areas, and, most commonly, private yards. The East Lawn Cemetery aggregation in Ithaca remains the flagship example that inspired the effort, but it predates the project’s launch and is not itself a new GNBee-era discovery. So the clearest answer is that Project GNBee has revealed that pollinator “hotspots” are widespread and often overlooked, appearing in ordinary human-managed spaces across multiple countries. However, the available reporting does not provide a verified published list of newly discovered major super-sites by name and location worldwide.

3 articles · Updated · WIRED · May 30

A Cornell team estimated about 5.5 million Andrena regularis bees nesting across 1.25 acres of East Lawn Cemetery in Ithaca, documenting one of the largest such aggregations ever recorded.
Ten traps set from late March to mid-May 2023 sampled more than 3,000 insects from 16 species; researchers extrapolated a colony size of 3 million to 8 million, averaging 5.5 million.
The study, published in April in Apidologie, found males emerge days before females and that the bees overwinter underground as adults, helping them match early spring apple bloom in nearby orchards.
Researchers also recorded parasitism by Nomada imbricata and said the finding shows historic cemeteries can serve as important urban refuges for wild pollinators.
With 75% of wild bees living underground, the authors launched a citizen-science effort to map large nesting sites before construction, road work or habitat fragmentation destroys them.

Sources

WIRED24d ago

Cornell Team Documents 5.5 Million Subterranean Bees in New York Cemetery

MSN24d ago

A NY cemetery has been hiding 5.5 million bees underground for a century

The Weather Network24d ago

A NY cemetery has been hiding 5.5 million bees underground - The Weather Network

6 Sources

A cemetery's 5.5 million bees made honeybees obsolete. What other vital ecosystems are hiding in our cities?

Since the Project GNBee launch, what new pollinator hotspots have citizen scientists uncovered worldwide?

What is the economic value of a wild bee colony that provides free pollination for an entire region's orchards?

5.5 Million Ground-Nesting Bees Found in Ithaca: Conservation Lessons from a Cemetery Super-Colony

Overview

In 2022, researchers including Bryan Danforth and Rachel Fordyce discovered an extraordinarily large aggregation of ground-nesting bees in Ithaca, estimated at 5.5 million individuals. This significant find, detailed in Apidologie, immediately drew scientific attention for its profound ecological importance. Danforth emphasized the bees’ vital role as important pollinators and highlighted the urgent need to protect these huge populations. The discovery also came with a warning about their vulnerability—if their nesting sites are lost, millions of crucial pollinators could disappear instantly, underscoring the need for conservation efforts to safeguard these essential species.

...