Webinar Title: Bumble Bees (Great Southeast Pollinator Course — Week Two)
Webinar Date: June 23, 2026
Speaker: Rich Hatfield, Senior Conservation Biologist, Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation
Panelist / Co-host: Becky Griffin, UGA Extension (Mountain Research and Education Center, Blairsville, GA)
Moderator: Becky Griffin (co-host: Rich Braman, behind the scenes)
Duration: 1:24:44
Series: Great Southeast Pollinator Course
CEU / Credit: No applicator CEU. 1 PLU for educators attending the live session.
NARRATIVE SUMMARY
Rich Hatfield, senior conservation biologist with the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, opened Week Two with about 35 minutes on bumble bee ecology and conservation, joined by co-host and panelist Becky Griffin of UGA Extension. Hatfield explained why bees outrank other insect pollinators: they collect pollen on purpose, as their only protein source, and most lay their eggs directly on it. He placed bumble bees in scale — roughly 20,000 bee species worldwide, around 500 in the Southeast, and about 16 bumble bee species across the Southeastern U.S. He walked the annual life cycle, from a queen leaving her hibernacula in spring to the first worker brood emerging four to six weeks later, then covered cuckoo bumble bees that invade and take over other species’ nests, and buzz pollination of plants with poricidal anthers such as tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant — something honey bees cannot do.
On conservation, Hatfield reported that about a quarter of North American bumble bees face some extinction risk, six of the Southeast’s 16 species among them. Three sit on the Endangered Species Act: the rusty patched bumble bee (Bombus affinis, 2017), Franklin’s (2022), and the Suckley cuckoo bumble bee (Bombus suckleyi, proposed 2025). He tied declines to habitat loss, neonicotinoid insecticides that move into pollen and nectar and persist in soil up to seven years, the pathogen Vairimorpha bombi spread by commercial bumble bees, honey bee competition, and climate change. His home actions: plant diversity, native flowers, early-spring and late-fall blooms, leaving leaf litter and messy overwintering habitat, avoiding pre-treated nursery plants, and joining the Bumble Bee Atlas (bumblebeeatlas.org).
Becky Griffin’s half tied the biology to the Great Southeast Pollinator Census (August 21–22, 2026). From the UGA Mountain Research and Education Center in Blairsville, she covered insect anatomy, the corbicula (pollen basket), branched body hair that grabs pollen electrostatically, long tongues, bee vision and floral nectar guides, and recent cognition studies in which bumble bees solved problems they were never taught. Her census message stayed simple: counters only need to recognize a bumble bee — fat and fuzzy with a hairy “fuzzy fanny,” against the carpenter bee’s smooth “shiny hiney.” The eastern bumble bee (Bombus impatiens) is about 70% of what she sees.
YOUTUBE TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Introductions
1:19 Rich Hatfield: bumble bee ecology overview
3:20 Why pollinators matter
5:11 Why bees are the most significant pollinators
6:14 Bee and bumble bee diversity
7:50 Physiology, cognition, and diet breadth
9:12 The annual bumble bee life cycle
12:40 Cuckoo bumble bees
15:48 Buzz pollination and poricidal anthers
17:41 Nesting and overwintering
20:44 Bumble bee conservation status
21:50 Three species on the Endangered Species Act
22:52 Why bumble bees are declining
25:41 Neonicotinoids and systemic insecticides
27:23 Pathogens, honey bee competition, climate
30:14 What you can do at home
33:11 Choosing real flowers, avoiding treated plants
35:15 Community science and the Bumble Bee Atlas
37:37 Q&A with Rich Hatfield
43:41 Becky Griffin: identifying bumble bees
44:33 Apple pollination at Blairsville
46:09 Insect anatomy and the pollen press
48:35 The corbicula and foraging on St. John’s wort
51:46 Habitat beyond flowers
52:40 The eastern bumble bee (Bombus impatiens)
54:50 How bees learn and stay flower-faithful
57:31 Bee hair (pile) and electrostatic pollen pickup
1:00:24 Wings
1:04:08 Legs, tarsi, and tarsal claws
1:05:27 Faces, ocelli, and how bees see color
1:07:53 Bee cognition studies
1:09:38 Counting bumble bees for the census
1:10:47 Fuzzy fanny vs. shiny hiney
1:13:48 Why bumble bees are the superior pollinator
1:15:25 Closing Q&A
1:23:31 Wrap-up and next week
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
Q: How long does it take a bumble bee to go from egg to adult?
A: Four to six weeks, through larval instars and a pupal stage, just like a caterpillar to a butterfly. That first brood to emerge becomes the queen’s workers. Hatfield stressed how exposed the queen is during those weeks — she has to incubate and feed the brood while still flying out for her own food, often in cold, wet early-season weather.
Q: Out in the field, can you tell a queen from a worker?
A: Not reliably. Hatfield said there is a narrow size gap between a large worker and a small queen, and midsummer — when big workers are out and new queens are starting to emerge — is the hardest time. With enough experience watching different species you get a sense of it, but there is no surefire way to call it.
Q: Are cuckoo bumble bees a separate species, or can any bumble bee take over another’s nest?
A: Cuckoo bumble bees are their own species, and invading another species’ nest is the lifestyle that defines them — they kill or displace the foundress queen and use her workers to raise their own reproductives. A few non-cuckoo species show cuckoo-like behavior, but that happens mostly in high-alpine or high-latitude areas with short seasons, not in the Southeast.
Q: How does a queen incubate her eggs, and how many does she lay?
A: She detaches her wings from her flight muscles and vibrates those muscles to generate heat, then uses that heat to keep the eggs at developing temperature — which burns a lot of calories and means she also has to keep foraging. Egg numbers vary by species and habitat, from as few as 50 in a whole nest up to over a thousand; the common eastern bumble bee runs to roughly a thousand individuals.
Q: Which crops depend on buzz pollination?
A: Plants with poricidal anthers, where the pollen is locked inside a tube and only shakes loose when a bee vibrates the anthers. Many are in the family Solanaceae — tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant — and Hatfield put buzz-pollinated plants at about 8 to 10% of plants overall. Honey bees do not perform this action, so those crops do not benefit from honey bee visits.
Q: Why are neonicotinoids such a concern for bumble bees?
A: They are systemic and water-soluble, so the plant absorbs them and expresses them in every tissue, including the pollen and nectar. A bee feeding on a treated plant takes a microdose each time, producing sublethal effects on navigation and reproduction. They also persist — one study found them still present seven years after a single application to a woody plant.
Q: Does keeping honey bees help with conservation?
A: No. Hatfield called it animal husbandry, not conservation — honey bees are not endangered, and there may be more of them now than ever. A single hive has 15,000 to 80,000 mouths to feed, and honey bees overlap heavily with native bees on the same plants, so they compete for pollen and nectar, especially in shoulder seasons. Keep bees for honey if you want, just not as a conservation act.
Q: Can technology locate bumble bee nests underground?
A: Infrared and heat-seeking approaches have not worked so far. What has shown promise is radio telemetry — gluing tiny radio antennae onto bumble bees and following them back to the nest, which let the Xerces crew find a few nests. New ultralight solar tags developed for monarch tracking are also being tried this summer.
Q: What is the most common bumble bee I’ll see in Georgia?
A: The eastern bumble bee, Bombus impatiens — about 70% of the bumble bees Griffin sees. It has a long tongue that reaches nectar deep in flowers and a yellow front abdominal segment (tergite). She offered it as the one name to remember: recognize Bombus impatiens and you have the most common bee covered.
Q: Do I need to identify bumble bees to species for the census?
A: No. For the Great Southeast Pollinator Census you only need to recognize that it is a bumble bee — a fat, fuzzy bee with a hairy abdomen, the “fuzzy fanny.” Griffin contrasted that with the carpenter bee’s smooth, bald abdomen, the “shiny hiney” from Week One, which keeps friction down as it tunnels through wood.
Q: Why does a bumble bee move so much more pollen than a small metallic sweat bee?
A: Bumble bees are covered in branched body hair — the scientific term is pile — and that hair picks up an electrostatic charge in flight, so negatively charged pollen jumps onto the bee with little effort and stays trapped in the branched hairs. A metallic sweat bee has sparse hair and no pollen basket; it carries pollen on bristles on its legs and simply does not hold as much.
Q: How much space do bumble bees need, and what habitat is easy to overlook?
A: Hatfield estimated roughly a half-mile diameter could support a colony in a resource-rich area, since bumble bees forage the shortest distance they can to save calories. Griffin added the habitat people miss: nesting and overwintering sites. If you bag up all your leaves and clear every fallen twig and limb, you may be hauling off overwintering queens and the messy spots where bumble bees would nest.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
- Xerces Society — free fact sheets and floral resource lists at xerces.org, including the “Buying Bee Safe Plants” fact sheet.
- Bumble Bee Atlas — community science project; sign up at bumblebeeatlas.org. The Southeast effort (TN, NC, SC, GA) has gathered 6,200 observations on 12 species over three years.
- Great Southeast Pollinator Census — August 21–22, 2026. Counters only need to recognize a bumble bee.
- Bumble bee posters available from Xerces, Pollinator.org, and Bees in Your Backyard; the U.S. Forest Service produced an Eastern U.S. poster covering the region’s 16 species (no Southeast-only poster exists).
- Next week (Week Three): butterflies, with Dr. Sonia Altizer (Head, UGA Entomology Department) and Jeremy Rhoden (University of Florida, Florida census coordinator).
Processed for UGA Center for Urban Agriculture / Great Southeast Pollinator Course Archives
Source: Corrected SRT (Stage 1) — GTBOP_Transcript_2026-06-23_Bumblebees.srt (280 blocks)