Webinar Date: June 23, 2026
Speakers: Rich Hatfield, Senior Conservation Biologist, Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation; Becky Griffin, UGA Extension (Mountain Research and Education Center, Blairsville, GA)
Duration: 1:24:44
Series: Great Southeast Pollinator Course
Credit at a Glance
| Educator PLU | 1 PLU for educators who attended the live session. |
| Applicator CEU | None. This session carries no Georgia pesticide applicator CEU categories. |
| Archive viewing | The recording is for education and census preparation. PLU credit was tied to live attendance and does not transfer to asynchronous viewing. |
This is a Great Southeast Pollinator Course session for home gardeners, school and community gardens, growers, county agents, and census volunteers — not a licensed-applicator program. Frame it accordingly when you share it.
Who This Is For
Use this session with anyone preparing for the Great Southeast Pollinator Census (August 21–22, 2026) or running pollinator programming. It works as a standalone primer on bumble bee biology and a direct lead-in to census counting. Master Gardener groups, school garden coordinators, and county pollinator volunteers are the natural audiences.
What the Session Covers
Rich Hatfield (Xerces Society) takes the first 35 minutes on ecology and conservation. He explains why bees are the most significant pollinators — they collect pollen deliberately as their protein source — and frames the scale of diversity (≈20,000 bee species worldwide, ≈500 in the Southeast, ≈16 bumble bee species regionally). He walks the annual bumble bee life cycle, cuckoo bumble bees, and buzz pollination of tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant that honey bees cannot perform. On conservation, he covers the three Endangered Species Act listings — rusty patched (Bombus affinis, 2017), Franklin’s (2022), Suckley cuckoo (Bombus suckleyi, proposed 2025) — and the threats behind the declines, including neonicotinoids that persist in soil up to seven years and the pathogen Vairimorpha bombi. He closes with home actions: plant diversity, native and shoulder-season blooms, leaving messy overwintering habitat, and avoiding pre-treated nursery plants.
Becky Griffin’s second half connects the biology to census counting. She walks insect anatomy, the corbicula (pollen basket), branched body hair and electrostatic pollen pickup, bee vision, and recent cognition studies. Her practical takeaway for counters: you only need to recognize a bumble bee — fat and fuzzy with a hairy “fuzzy fanny,” versus the carpenter bee’s smooth “shiny hiney.” The eastern bumble bee (Bombus impatiens) is about 70% of what she sees and the one name worth memorizing.
Viewing Notes for Asynchronous Use
- Total runtime is 1:24:44. If you have a single session, the natural split is the presenter handoff at 43:41 — Hatfield’s ecology/conservation half before, Griffin’s identification/census half after.
- For census prep specifically, start volunteers at 1:09:38 (Counting bumble bees for the census) through 1:13:48, then back up to 43:41 for the full identification walk-through if time allows.
- For a conservation/home-gardener audience, the 30:14–37:37 block (what you can do at home, choosing real flowers, the Bumble Bee Atlas) stands on its own.
- Full chapter list is in the website archive version for this session.
Pull These for Discussion
- The census mnemonic: “fuzzy fanny” (bumble bee) vs. “shiny hiney” (carpenter bee) — a Week One callback that lands with every audience.
- Buzz pollination: tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant need it; honey bees can’t provide it. A strong hook for vegetable gardeners.
- The honey bee myth: keeping honey bees is animal husbandry, not conservation. Expect questions; Hatfield addresses it directly in the Q&A.
- One name to remember: Bombus impatiens, the eastern bumble bee, ~70% of sightings.
Resources to Share
- Great Southeast Pollinator Census — August 21–22, 2026.
- Bumble Bee Atlas — bumblebeeatlas.org (community science; the Southeast effort has 6,200 observations on 12 species over three years).
- Xerces Society — xerces.org, including the “Buying Bee Safe Plants” fact sheet.
- 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: Stage 2 Archive Package — GTBOP_Archive_Summary_2026-06-23_Bumblebees.md