Between 2003 and 2013, Brock University biology professor and bee expert, Miriam Richards and her research team collected and recorded the number of bees and number of species they got from traps at the Glenridge Quarry Naturalization site in St. Catharines and compared that to traps they set in three sites at Brock that had not been restored.

The team found that the numbers of individual bees and bee species in the Glenridge Quarry Naturalization site went up, at first.

“Our results suggest that ‘If you restore it, they will come’: restored foraging and nesting sites were re-occupied by bees as soon as they became available, then bee numbers continued to grow for three to four years,” says the study, “Rapid initial recovery and long-term persistence of a bee community in a former landfill” published recently in the journal Insect Conservation and Diversity.

Richards’ study, funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, puts the spotlight on a trend that has scientists and environmentalists worried: the worldwide drop in bee populations.

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Brock Bee Lab – headquarters of Richards’ research