diff --git a/server/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/search/aggregations/bucket/BucketsAggregator.java b/server/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/search/aggregations/bucket/BucketsAggregator.java
index ea667b821a7dd..665dd49e3381d 100644
--- a/server/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/search/aggregations/bucket/BucketsAggregator.java
+++ b/server/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/search/aggregations/bucket/BucketsAggregator.java
@@ -105,7 +105,6 @@ public final void rewriteBuckets(long newNumBuckets, LongUnaryOperator mergeMap)
         try {
             docCounts = bigArrays().newLongArray(newNumBuckets, true);
             success = true;
-            docCounts.fill(0, newNumBuckets, 0);
             for (long i = 0; i < oldDocCounts.size(); i++) {
                 long docCount = oldDocCounts.get(i);