Great Southeast Pollinator Course — Week One
Aired: June 16, 2026
Presenters: Whitney Ottinger, Sustainable Agriculture Educator, UGA Center for Urban Agriculture; Dr. Bethany Harris, Director, UGA Center for Urban Agriculture (Griffin campus)
Host: Becky Griffin (co-host: Rich Braman)
Runtime: 1:21:08
Credit
This is a pollinator-conservation education session for home gardeners, school and community gardens, growers, county agents, and Great Southeast Pollinator Census volunteers. It is not applicator-CEU programming.
- No pesticide-applicator CEU categories apply to this session.
- Educators who attended the live session earn 1 PLU. The PLU is tied to live attendance; the archived recording is for asynchronous learning and program use, not live-session credit.
If you are using this archive with a group, treat it as a teaching resource rather than a credit-bearing course.
Who this is for and how to use it
This guide helps county agents, Master Gardener coordinators, school-garden leaders, and census volunteers use the recording in their own programs. The session pairs an ecology-and-identification half (Ottinger) with a research-and-habitat half (Harris), so it works either as a single 81-minute viewing or as two ~40-minute segments shown on different days.
Suggested asynchronous uses
- Pre-census training. Show the identification material (6:47 shiny hiney vs. fuzzy fanny; 25:45 male vs. female faces; 1:07:42 census walkthrough) before August 21–22 so volunteers can separate carpenter bees from bumblebees in the field.
- Garden-club or classroom segment. The first half (through 19:33) stands alone as “why carpenter bees matter and how to live with them.”
- Habitat-planning workshop. The plant-selection material (43:40 wildflower trial; 50:54 crepe myrtle cultivars; 54:59 year-round habitat) supports a hands-on garden-design session.
What the session covers
Becky Griffin opened Week One with the insect she called the most controversial on the census: the carpenter bee. Whitney Ottinger made the ecological case — carpenter bees as native pollinators, the eastern Xylocopa virginica (“woodcutter”) versus the Southern Xylocopa micans, the solitary life cycle with primary, secondary, and tertiary females, the specialized fit with purple passionflower (Passiflora incarnata), and prevention that begins with painting or sealing exposed wood rather than spraying. Dr. Bethany Harris went deeper on research and habitat: nesting galleries and DIY nesting boxes (untreated softwood, a half-inch entrance hole per NC State, morning sun and afternoon shade), buzz pollination at roughly 130 Hz with forces up to 80 times body weight (DeLuca et al.), UGA’s 32-species wildflower trial, the crepe myrtle study flagging ‘Seminole’ and ‘Victor’, carpenter bees as nectar robbers on tubular salvias, and building year-round habitat ahead of the census.
Chapter index for selective viewing
0:00 Welcome: the most controversial bee on the census
1:31 Whitney Ottinger: a systems approach to pests
5:00 Why carpenter bees thrive near people
6:03 Xylocopa virginica, the “woodcutter”
6:47 Shiny hiney vs. fuzzy fanny
7:37 The Southern carpenter bee (X. micans)
8:36 Life cycle: emergence, mating, and stings
10:42 How females build and provision nests
12:09 Primary, secondary, and tertiary females
13:40 A special bond with purple passionflower
15:05 Buzz pollination and the 15% crop figure
16:58 Prevention: seal the wood first
19:33 Q&A with Whitney Ottinger
23:08 Dr. Bethany Harris: identifying carpenter bees
25:45 Flight patterns and male vs. female faces
28:41 Inside the nesting galleries
31:05 Building and placing DIY nesting boxes
36:01 Buzz pollination: 130 Hz, 80× body weight
40:37 The life cycle, season by season
43:40 UGA wildflower trial: 32 native species
50:01 Which plants attract carpenter bees
50:54 Crepe myrtle study: ‘Seminole’ and ‘Victor’
54:59 Designing year-round pollinator habitat
1:00:14 Carpenter bees as nectar robbers
1:02:51 Water, shelter, and resting sites
1:05:45 Woody plants for larger bees
1:07:42 Joining the Pollinator Census (Aug 21–22)
1:11:07 Q&A with Dr. Harris
1:19:22 Next week: bumblebees, and closing
Five takeaways to share with your group
- ID by the abdomen. Carpenter bee = shiny black “shiny hiney”; bumblebee = “fuzzy fanny.” Carpenter bees nest in wood and are solitary; bumblebees nest in the ground in small colonies.
- They earn their keep. Native bees pollinate up to about 15% of US agricultural crops, and carpenter bees buzz-pollinate tomatoes, blueberries, eggplant, and peppers.
- Manage the wood, not the bee. Paint or seal exposed wood and move scrap lumber away from structures before considering insecticide, which is a last resort.
- Build habitat that lasts the season. Plan for nectar and pollen from spring through fall; UGA trials favored Rudbeckia, Coreopsis, Helenium, asters, and salvias, plus woodies like Vitex.
- Count every landing. For the census, pick one flowering plant on a warm sunny morning and count for 15 minutes; if a bee leaves and returns, count it again.
Resources
- Great Southeast Pollinator Census — August 21–22, 2026; counting and identification guide and count sheet on the census website, with carpenter bees as a listed counting category.
- Southern SARE — free public PDF publications, including one on managing alternative pollinators.
- Webinar recording and references — posted to the pollinator course recordings page; attendees also receive a follow-up email with the link.
- Next week: Bumblebees, with Becky Griffin and Rich Hatfield (Xerces Society).
Processed for UGA Center for Urban Agriculture / Great Southeast Pollinator Course Archives
Source: Archive Package (Stage 2) — GTBOP_Archive_Summary_2026-06-16_CarpenterBees.md