Cornell professor of entomology, Bryan Danforth, and his research assistant, Henry Steig, are walking slowly through Webster Union Cemetery, eyes to the ground, when Danforth sees it.
A cloud of dozens of bees, swirling and darting close to the earth.
"Whoa, look at this! We did not waste our time," Danforth told Steig, who is an undergraduate at Cornell studying entomology.
They were in Rochester last week to put a theory to the test. Their question: Are graveyards natural gathering places for ground-nesting bees?
What brought them here was a remarkable discovery at East Lawn Cemetery in Ithaca in 2022: an aggregation of bees thought to be among the largest in the world.
"In a one-and-a-half-acre area of that cemetery, there were 5.5 million bees coming out of the ground," Danforth said.
That hefty population was made up of Andrena regularis, which are active through the spring. The bees spotted in Webster were Colletes thoracicus, a similar species that is generally seen in the summer months.
Cemeteries are ideal nesting sites because of their well-drained, sandy soil, low foot traffic, low pesticide use, and abundance of wildflowers and trees, according to the researchers. And these species are hard-working pollinators drawn to wildflowers, crops, and fruit trees.
They're also harmless. Earlier, at White Haven Memorial Park in Pittsford, Steig gently grasped one between his fingers.
"They won't sting you, and, and certainly they would never go after anyone who is walking nearby," he said. "You can lie on top of their nests, and they just wait for you to get up, so they're very friendly creatures."
And that's a key message the researchers are trying to pass on to the public.
At White Haven, Danforth handed a bunch of signs to its assistant director of ground operations and horticulture, Adam Romagnola, to place around the cemetery. The signs urge people not to be afraid of the bees, but to see them as a reflection of rebirth and renewal.
"There's new life coming out of the ground throughout the spring, summer, and fall, and that's a beautiful thing," Danforth added. "We don't just need to think about death when we're in cemeteries."
Ground-nesting bees can be found anywhere there is sandy loam soil. By emphasizing how docile they are, they hope to encourage people not to call an exterminator if they see them in their backyard, in a park, or on a golf course.
Aggressive hornets and wasps that build nests in the ground are sometimes confused with bees. One way to tell the difference is to notice how many insects are emerging from the ground. If there's a steady stream of activity, that is likely a wasp or hornet nest.
"If there's multiple nests, and each nest has what looks like a single female coming out and doing her thing, those are totally docile bees, and you just leave those alone," Steig explained.
Cornell has launched a community science initiative focused on researching, conserving, and managing native ground-nesting bees. They're already getting reports from people around the world who've spotted them.
You can't escape the irony that the whole thing started because a technician in Danforth's lab stumbled upon the largest and oldest recorded aggregations of ground-nesting bees in the world in a cemetery that is a 10-minute walk from the lab.
"I already did buy two plots for my wife and I at the East Lawn Cemetery, because I want to be laid to rest near the bees with a good view of the Andrena regularis," Danforth said with a laugh.
