Every week or so last summer, I worked in a chestnut orchard in the city of Syracuse in New York State. One day, I thought to myself, why have we never surveyed these trees for the chestnut mining bee (Andrena rehni)? View image in fullscreen A chestnut mining bee on an American-heritage chestnut in an orchard of several hundred mixed varieties at the Lafayette Road Experiment Station in Syracuse, New York. Photograph: Courtesy of Mollym JacobsonThe chestnut mining bee is a holy grail kind of bee, and for the past few years the hunt has been on to find it. View image in fullscreen Molly Jacobson in the upstate New York chestnut orchard where she rediscovered the chestnut mining bee.

Source: The Guardian March 30, 2026 14:31 UTC