Webinar: Small Bees (Great Southeast Pollinator Course — Week Four)
Webinar Date: July 7, 2026
Speakers: Amanda Bratcher (NC Cooperative Extension, Lee County); Dr. Kris Braman (University of Georgia, Professor Emerita of Entomology)
Series: Great Southeast Pollinator Course
Source: Corrected SRT (Stage 1) — GTBOP_Transcript_2026-07-07_SmallBees.srt (259 blocks); Archive Package (Stage 2) for structural reference
Purpose: These eleven prompts direct students to specific video segments with a focused task. Taken in order, they also give a course developer a ready outline for subdividing the ~72-minute recording into Moodle sections. The set spans the full session and segments cleanly at the presenter handoff and the Q&A: prompts 1–6 cover Amanda Bratcher’s identification half (ends 34:18), prompts 7–10 cover Dr. Kris Braman’s research-and-conservation half (34:19–1:04:42), and prompt 11 covers the joint Q&A and close (1:04:43–1:12:05).
Part One — Amanda Bratcher: Identifying Small Bees
Review Task 1
Watch: 0:00 – 4:40
Task: Note how the session opens and why Bratcher makes the case for small bees.
Key Points to Identify:
- The census sorts bees into categories, and small bees are the smallest box — the ground Bratcher wants volunteers to grow comfortable with.
- Why they matter beyond honey bees: small native bees are critical to food security, are economically important, and support ecosystem health.
- The framing hook: a January Washington Post article — “good news, we saved the bees; bad news, we saved the wrong ones” — and the realization that many people never knew honey bees weren’t the whole story.
Review Task 2
Watch: 4:40 – 9:38
Task: Capture the definition of a small bee and where bees sit among the insects.
Key Points to Identify:
- For the census, a small bee is anything at or below honey bee size; identification is a practice you build over time, not a test you pass or fail.
- North Carolina has close to 600 bee species (including the larger, familiar ones), and the photos shown were taken by Sam Droege at the USGS Bee Lab in Maryland.
- Bees sit in the order Hymenoptera (with wasps and ants): about 150,000 Hymenoptera worldwide, only ~20,000 true bees, and ~4,000 true bees in North America. Bees are the “vegetarian wasps” — pollen and nectar feeders with four clear wings.
Review Task 3
Watch: 9:38 – 14:47
Task: Learn the beginner’s framework of families and the first identification clues.
Key Points to Identify:
- The five families to focus on: Apidae, Megachilidae, Andrenidae, Halictidae, and Colletidae. The free Bees of North Carolina guide (Youngsteadt & Levenson) is available as a PDF and in print from UNC Press.
- Three big ID clues: where the pollen-carrying hairs (scopa) sit on the female — abdomen, hind leg, or the Apidae’s corbicula — plus wing venation (recurrent veins, submarginal cells, basal vein shape).
- Male vs. female: a stinger means female; the pollen-carrying hairs are the real differentiator; you can’t count antennal segments or tergites on a flying bee, and males are often the hairier of the two.
Review Task 4
Watch: 14:47 – 21:36
Task: Work through the five bee families and what makes each recognizable.
Key Points to Identify:
- Apidae — the hairy, bumblebee-like “cuddly” family (long-horned, digger/blueberry bees, small carpenter bees, and wasp-like Nomada cuckoo bees). Megachilidae — leafcutter, mason, and resin bees with a rounded, cigar/submarine-shaped abdomen, including Osmia blue orchard bees.
- Andrenidae — ground-nesting mining bees seen in aggregations, plus the pinhead-sized Perdita fairy bees. Halictidae — metallic green sweat bees (Agapostemon, Lasioglossum) with defined colored hair bands on the abdomen.
- Colletidae — cellophane bees that secrete a waterproof, cellophane-like lining that lets nests survive flooding, and the yellow-faced Hylaeus, which carry pollen internally rather than on body hairs.
Review Task 5
Watch: 21:36 – 28:23
Task: Master the bee-vs-wasp-vs-fly cues and the small-bee life history.
Key Points to Identify:
- Wasps are generally hairless with a very thin, sharply pinched waist. Flies have only two wings plus club-shaped halteres, large eyes, very short antennae, and a fast, jerky flight — versus a bee’s four clear wings.
- Small bees undergo complete metamorphosis and spend roughly 75% of the year as a pupa, mostly out of sight underground or in a stem. About 70% of North Carolina species nest in soil, with fewer in wood and stems.
- Most small bees are solitary — even aggregations are “single mamas” nesting near one another; a few are social, and the rest are brood parasites (cuckoo bees).
Review Task 6
Watch: 28:23 – 34:18
Task: Review Amanda’s Q&A block.
Key Points to Identify:
- Sweat bees are named for landing on people to harvest salt from sweat; the green Agapostemon tend to be more frantic and hard to photograph. Species differ some from state to state — discoverlife.org and state Natural Heritage programs keep checklists.
- Cuckoo bees are named for the cuckoo bird; when both the cuckoo bee and its host persist together, it signals a healthy ecosystem with enough resources for both.
- Stem management: leave stems over winter but cut them; the bees populate stems in spring/summer and persist about two years before emerging, so leave cut stems standing roughly two years.
Part Two — Dr. Kris Braman: Urban Bee Research and Conservation
Review Task 7
Watch: 34:19 – 42:47
Task: Capture the core research findings on urban bee diversity and forests.
Key Points to Identify:
- Braman’s bottom line up front: trees are so important — “plant more trees for the bees.” Small bees are among the most numerous groups reported in every census.
- The 50-property pan-trap study gathered almost 5,000 bees and 111 species — about 20% of Georgia’s ~540 species — and diversity was sensitive to landscape context at different scales (2 m to 200 m; agriculture, forest, or urbanization).
- Up to 83% of Georgia’s bees are forest-associated (26% found exclusively in forest), so forest remnants are extremely valuable habitat; a follow-up eight-site Athens study added 122 species.
Review Task 8
Watch: 42:47 – 48:52
Task: Learn how the urban bee community breaks down and see two featured groups.
Key Points to Identify:
- Functional groups sort bees by nesting site (cavity, litter, soil), origin (native or exotic), sociality (eusocial, parasitic, solitary), diet breadth (specialist or generalist), seasonality, and size. Most urban bees are small, solitary, early-to-mid-season, soil-nesting native generalists.
- Bee abundance and species richness were higher at the forest edge than the interior; canopy cover, invasive shrub cover, ground cover, and tree diversity all shape which species show up (more ground cover means fewer soil-nesting bees).
- Andrena mining bees (30 species found) are among the earliest active bees; Nomada (17 species) are parasitic and viewed as indicator species for healthy host-bee populations.
Review Task 9
Watch: 48:52 – 55:33
Task: Work through the bee-house findings and the flowers-for-tough-sites study.
Key Points to Identify:
- Bee houses colonize well but fill mostly with exotics — the giant resin bee (Megachile sculpturalis) and Osmia taurus — so they don’t represent the native community; don’t leave houses up too long, or parasites like Melittobia wasps build up.
- Leafcutter leaf damage (half-moon cuts) doesn’t harm the plant and needs no treatment; a recurring lesson is to tolerate a little messiness. The Asian needle ant is now suspected in a decline of wood-nesting bees of as much as 70% over the last decade in Georgia.
- In an eroded, amended site, adding black-eyed Susan, partridge pea, rattlesnake master, coreopsis, and mountain mint drew about 33 times more bees than grass alone.
Review Task 10
Watch: 55:33 – 1:04:42
Task: Summarize the bee-flower networks, the “five simple things,” and native-plant guidance.
Key Points to Identify:
- Bee-to-flower networks: Halictus ligatus was the most frequent visitor to black-eyed Susan, and rattlesnake master was especially valuable to Lasioglossum; Lasioglossum, Halictus, and Bombus were the most abundant overall. Some grasses (e.g., centipedegrass, per Shimat Joseph’s lab) also support bees, and specialist bees like those needing scentless mock orange appear when the right plant is present.
- Five simple things: tolerate a little messiness, provide water, leave bare spots for ground-nesting bees, leave stems for stem-nesting bees, and plant a cottage garden with all-season color — plus “plant more trees for the bees.”
- Native-plant notes: different flowers and even cultivars attract different pollinators (salvia ‘Hot Paprika’ was most attractive); watch for unintended consequences like the beetles now common on coreopsis; people adopt conservation when they have awareness, a positive attitude, and prior experience — which the census provides.
Part Three — Joint Q&A and Close
Review Task 11
Watch: 1:04:43 – 1:12:05
Task: Review the closing questions on soil, damage, bee houses, stems, and early forage.
Key Points to Identify:
- Soil for ground-nesting bees: use native soil (some add sand for particular species); limit typical mulch, but gravel mulch and gravel pathways are compatible because bees can still reach the soil. Petal damage on coneflowers could be a small bee or a leaf-feeding beetle, and a nibble here and there isn’t a concern.
- Why exotics dominate bee houses: Osmia taurus emerges first and dominates the resource, and the giant resin bee is aggressive enough to pull carpenter bees from their nests.
- Stem-cutting in detail (Amanda): trim to 18–24 inches, keep stems attached and off the ground; shorter stems bias toward male-only eggs, so longer is better; don’t lay stems on the soil where fungi and bacteria can saturate and trap the bees. Early-spring bees rely on early-blooming trees like maples and willows and on native woodland ephemerals — “trees for the bees.” Next week: Honey Bees, with Dr. Jamie Ellis (UGA) and Bethany Arrear (Alabama census coordinator).
Processed for UGA Center for Urban Agriculture / Great Southeast Pollinator Course Archives
Source: Corrected SRT (Stage 1) — GTBOP_Transcript_2026-07-07_SmallBees.srt (259 blocks); Archive Package (Stage 2)