雅思阅读 12: Five Million Bees in the Graveyard（墓地里的五百万只蜜蜂）

改编自 Cornell University / Apidologie（2026年4月）。雅思阅读 Section 3 难度，约 1050 词。 素材来源：https://morningoverview.com/a-new-york-cemetery-just-turned-out-to-hide-the-worlds-biggest-wild-bee-colony/

Reading Passage

A. Cemeteries are, for most people, places of quiet remembrance. They are also, increasingly, places of unexpected ecological richness. A study published in the journal Apidologie in 2026 has documented what may be the largest aggregation of wild bees ever recorded: roughly 5.5 million ground-nesting bees occupying a 1.5-acre section of a cemetery in New York State. The colony, dominated by a single species — Andrena regularis — is estimated to have been tunnelling beneath the burial plots for more than a century, unnoticed by generations of mourners, groundskeepers and entomologists alike. The discovery adds to a growing body of evidence that graveyards, often dismissed as aesthetically pleasing but ecologically sterile green spaces, may serve as crucial refuges for pollinators whose natural habitats have been eroded by urbanisation, intensive agriculture and pesticide use. The 1.5-acre plot now hosts one of the densest aggregations of solitary bees ever recorded in North America, and the team's estimate of 5.5 million individuals has, as far as the published literature allows, no known rival. What makes the find emblematic, however, is not its size but its setting: it was made not in a national park or a nature reserve but in a place most visitors walk through without looking down.

B. The story began, as many such stories do, with a casual observation. A local naturalist visiting the cemetery in early spring noticed dense emergences of small bees around the base of several mature trees. Ground-nesting mining bees of the genus Andrena are difficult to study: they tunnel into bare soil, fly for only a few weeks each spring, and their nests are scattered invisibly across the landscape. The naturalist alerted researchers at Cornell University, who visited the site and conducted systematic quadrat surveys across the 1.5-acre plot. By counting nest entrances within measured squares and extrapolating across the site, the team arrived at the staggering estimate of 5.5 million individuals. The bees are not a single hive in the manner of honeybees; Andrena species are solitary, each female digging her own tunnel and provisioning her own cells, but they aggregate in dense aggregations when soil conditions are ideal. Counting nest entrances in measured squares is an estimate, not a census, and the team was careful to state its range: between four and seven million bees, depending on which correction factors were applied to allow for unoccupied holes and overlapping tunnels. Even at the lower bound, the figure dwarfs anything previously recorded for a comparable ground-nesting species.

C. Why a cemetery? The answer lies in a confluence of environmental factors that cemeteries, almost by accident, provide. The soil is typically well-drained and relatively undisturbed — burial plots are dug only once, and the surrounding ground is rarely ploughed, treated with heavy herbicides or paved over. Mature trees and shrubs offer early-spring pollen and nectar precisely when Andrena bees emerge from hibernation. The absence of intensive pesticide application — most modern cemeteries maintain their lawns with minimal chemical inputs — means that the soil is not toxic to larvae developing underground. And, crucially, cemeteries are rarely developed for other purposes: a plot of land that has remained green and undisturbed for a century is a rare commodity in an expanding metropolitan area. The Cornell researchers note that other cemeteries across the eastern United States may conceal comparable aggregations, simply because no one has looked. The same logic applies to golf courses, railway embankments and even the broad verges of suburban roads, all of which share the cemetery's rare combination of bare, undisturbed soil and mature spring vegetation. The limiting factor, in most cases, is not habitat suitability but survey effort: no entomologist has systematically counted nesting bees in a graveyard since the genus was first identified.

D. The discovery comes at a moment of increasing concern about pollinator decline. Wild bees, which pollinate a vast proportion of flowering plants and agricultural crops, have suffered steep population losses over the past two decades, driven by habitat loss, pesticide exposure and climate change. Honeybees, kept commercially by beekeepers, receive the lion's share of public attention and conservation funding, but solitary native bees — most of which do not live in hives and do not produce honey — are responsible for a disproportionate share of pollination services and are often far more vulnerable. The cemetery finding suggests that these overlooked insects may be surviving in plain sight in habitats that have never been identified as conservation priority areas. City parks, road verges, railway embankments and, above all, graveyards could collectively form an informal network of pollinator habitat that no one has mapped. The omission is not academic. Pollinators are responsible, by most estimates, for a substantial fraction of the food humans eat, and their decline is therefore tracked with some anxiety by agricultural ministries. Yet the vast majority of that tracking has focused on managed honeybee hives, which are visibly kept in boxes; the solitary bees that actually do much of the work, nesting invisibly in the ground, have until recently been almost invisible to policy.

E. Practical implications follow. Cemetery managers, who have historically treated their grounds as horticultural displays rather than ecological reserves, can adjust their maintenance practices to favour nesting bees — reducing mowing frequency, leaving patches of bare soil, avoiding spring pesticide application, and planting native spring-blooming trees and shrubs. The Cornell team has already begun outreach to cemetery associations in New York and New England. The broader lesson, however, extends beyond bee conservation. The most biodiverse habitats are not always the remote rainforests and coral reefs that feature on conservation posters; sometimes they are the urban green spaces that people walk through every day, looking at tombstones rather than at the ground beneath their feet. The 5.5 million bees tunnelling beneath a New York graveyard are a reminder that the natural world is not somewhere you have to travel to find. It is already here, if you know where to look. For mourners and groundskeepers, the discovery asks nothing more dramatic than a slightly longer view. A cemetery maintained with mown grass, scattered wildflowers and a few undisturbed patches of bare soil is, in effect, a pollinator reserve that also commemorates the dead. That double use of the land — memory and habitat, side by side — is, the Cornell team suggests, a model that other cities could copy.

Questions 1-4

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B, C, D and E from the list of headings below.

List of Headings i. How the population was estimated ii. Why honeybees are better pollinators than solitary bees iii. What makes cemeteries ideal bee habitat iv. The decline of wild bees and why this matters v. The role of urban green spaces in conservation vi. The history of beekeeping in New York State vii. How the bees communicate with one another

1. Paragraph B: ____
2. Paragraph C: ____
3. Paragraph D: ____
4. Paragraph E: ____

Questions 5-8

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

5. What makes Andrena unusual compared to honeybees? A. They live in large, cooperative hives. B. They are solitary but nest in dense aggregations. C. They do not pollinate flowering plants. D. They are active throughout the entire year.

6. Why do cemeteries support such dense bee populations? A. They use large amounts of herbicide to keep weeds down. B. The soil is undisturbed, well-drained and free of heavy pesticides. C. They are routinely ploughed to aerate the soil. D. They import commercial beehives each spring.

7. Why are solitary native bees considered ecologically important? A. They produce more honey than honeybees. B. They are responsible for a large share of pollination despite receiving little attention. C. They are less vulnerable to pesticides than honeybees. D. They live exclusively in old-growth forests.

8. What practical recommendation does the article make? A. Cemetery managers should pave over unused plots. B. Cemeteries should increase mowing and pesticide use. C. Groundskeepers can adjust maintenance to favour nesting bees. D. Honeybees should be introduced to replace wild bees.

Questions 9-13

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer?

Write:

• TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
• FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
• NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

9. The bees found in the cemetery belong to a single species.
10. The colony was discovered by professional entomologists conducting a planned survey.
11. Andrena bees fly actively for several months each year.
12. Conservation funding for wild bees has doubled since 2020.
13. The Cornell team has contacted cemetery associations about their findings.

Questions 14-15

Complete the summary below using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage.

The cemetery in New York hosts approximately 5.5 million (14) __________ bees, a finding that suggests urban (15) __________ may serve as unexpected pollinator refuges.

答案与解析

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