Laurentian University researcher will use honey bee ‘research assistants’ to track mine rehabilitation

A Laurentian University researcher is set to launch a research project using honey bees to help with remediation work at the Côté Gold Mine near Gogama, Ont.

Mateus Pepinelli received a $100,000 grant from IAMGOLD to partner with the company on the two-year research project.

As part of it, bees will collect environmental DNA from areas the company is regreening around the mine site.

“Honey bees — they are actually serving as research assistants because they are collecting data for us,” Pepinelli said.

This summer, Pepinelli and a team from IAMGOLD will install three apiaries around the areas the company is remediating near the mine.

Collecting traces of DNA

At each apiary, they will also install a small fan equipped with a filter that is designed to collect traces of DNA the bees bring into the hive.

“We filter the air from a honey bee colony and pick up signals, ecological interactions,” he said.

Small traces of the things the bee touched when it was outside the hive will get trapped in the filter.

Pepinelli and his students will then collect the filters and extract that environmental DNA for analysis at a lab.

“There’s a great amount of information we can collect as we filter the air,” Pepinelli said.

“Lots of different species of plants, lots of different species of micro-organisms — we can pick up, like pathogens and the presence of things we don’t like in the hive such as varroa mites.”

Tracking progress

Jessica Tratnik, IAMGOLD’s environmental and social governance lead at the Côté Gold Mine, said the company can use the data it gets from the honey bees to better understand how its rehabilitation efforts are progressing.

“As we move through operations, the data really provides us a continuous signal of ecological change,” she said.

Tratnik said the company already plants native seeds in areas where mining activities have ended. But information that researchers get from the bees could let them know if there’s a shortage of certain plant species, or if other species aren’t getting pollinated.

She said the bees are also an efficient way to provide that information consistently, as opposed to observing those changes over time.

“We don’t know what happens when we’re not physically observing it and can’t see the different pollinators or species using [the landscape].”

Graeme Jennings, IAMGOLD’s vice-president of investor relations, told CBC News the Coté Gold Mine has more than 20 years of life left.

“This is seen as a generational mine.”

Rather than wait for production to end, Tratnik said, rehabilitating the land is a continuous process.

“If we weren’t progressively rehabilitating and checking in on these eco sites, that’s a very long time to wait for these areas to be returned back to the landscape, right?”