Up to 8 million bees are living in an underground network beneath this cemetery

A hidden city under the grass

It has been reported that researchers working at East Lawn Cemetery in Ithaca, New York, uncovered one of the largest known aggregations of ground‑nesting solitary bees ever recorded — an average of about 5.6 million emergent bees from a single lawn patch, with estimates ranging from roughly 3.1 to 8 million. Quiet, orderly headstones. Freshly cut grass. Nothing to give the game away. Then spring warms the soil and, in a matter of days, an entire metropolis of Andrena regularis surfaces. Who knew a cemetery could double as a buzzing suburb?

Life, neatly organized belowground

Each female digs a little nest 10–20 cm deep, carves a few pollen‑filled chambers and lays a single egg in each. Tight rows of these burrows produce astonishing density — researchers estimated peaks of more than 800 bees per square meter — discovered by trapping insects as they emerged in early spring. These are solitary bees, not honeybee hives. No swarms, no honey. They live mostly out of sight, with activity spiking when temperatures climb above about 20 °C and then fading just as fast.

Why it matters — and why cemeteries help

Records show the species has allegedly been present at the site since the 1930s, suggesting decades of stability beneath the lawn. That stability matters: A. regularis is an excellent pollinator of regional crops like apples and blueberries, and a mass of solitary bees can rival managed honeybee colonies in pollination power. Parasitic Nomada bees were also found, but parasitism rates were relatively low — it has been reported that only about 1.4 percent of nests were affected — possibly because the hosts emerge in a tight window and the parasites time their appearance differently. Conservation takeaway? Sometimes the best refuges for biodiversity are the places we walk past without a second thought.

Sources: discovermagazine.com, Hacker News