Bizarre Discovery in NYC Cemetery Rewrites What We Know About Bees

So not zombees but just some bees 🐝

Love you Anton! I just yesterday graduated with my B.S. in Physics and am accepted to going back for my Ph.D (fingers crossed on success). You have always been such an inspiration to me, and your relentless pursuit of the truth and scientific integrity. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for being such a Truly Wonderful Person!

I hope that no groundskeeper in any cemetery, nationwide, sprays pesticides out of panic or fear when they see the bees in such numbers.

I grew up in a small town in western Utah that was in the old bed of Lake Bonneville, a Pleistocene lake that covered most of the western part of the state. Because the lake dried up slowly, it left large areas of alkaline soil. There were mining bees that lived in this high pH soil where nothing else would, called alkali bees. They are excellent pollinators. When my father, a farmer, saw a group of alkali bees, he was careful to leave them undisturbed because he wanted them to pollinate our alfalfa crops to make seed. Honey bees are not very good pollinators for alfalfa, but we had a local honey producer that would put bee hives on our fields every year, because they will at least do some pollination. Another bee we used was called a leafcutter bee because it would lay eggs in holes we drilled in wooden boards, leave a pollen ball, then cut round circles of leaves to plug the hole, then repeat the process until the hole was filled. The eggs would hatch from the outside in, and they make excellent pollinators, too. Growing alfalfa seed was a major cash crop for us.

Small detail, Ithaca is not in NYC. It is in New York State.

2:25 Welp animals that make cemeteries their new home, is something that needs to be studied more. In France, they thought a certain toad was extinct, until they found a bunch of tadpoles on the cemetery. Because of those quiet places and little puddles that stay there, those toads were able to raise their Youngs and give them a better fighting chance in life.

My parents home has a very sandy backyard, and every spring for about two or three weeks, the plaster bees come up, build their little mounds and pollinate all the wildflowers. I always like to check it out when I visit. You can walk barefoot and they won’t sting. Very fun little critters to watch.

We recently buried my brother's ashes at the family plot in a local cemetery in New Zealand. What struck me while we were waiting for people was the bird song, from native birds and non natives too. There was so much bird noise. Many individuals from several species. Not far from the cemetery the bird song disappears. It was winter so there weren't many insects but I guess in summer there would be deafening cicada and cricket noise ( probably bees too ).

If a bee can make it in NYC, it can make it everywhere

0:41 I expected corpse honey.