Webinar Date: July 7, 2026
Speakers: Amanda Bratcher, Horticulture Agent, NC Cooperative Extension (Lee County Center, Sanford NC) — North Carolina State Coordinator, Great Southeast Pollinator Census; Dr. Kris Braman, Professor Emerita of Entomology, University of Georgia
Duration: 1:12:05
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) who wants to fill in the “small bees” box with confidence, and with anyone building or managing pollinator habitat. It works as a standalone primer on native-bee identification and as a practical guide to nesting and floral resources. Master Gardener groups, school garden coordinators, and county pollinator volunteers are the natural audiences — the same volunteer network Amanda Bratcher credits for the census in the Carolinas.
What the Session Covers
Amanda Bratcher (NC Cooperative Extension) takes roughly the first third on identification. She defines a “small bee” for census purposes as anything at or below honey bee size, reframes honey bee fame with the January Washington Post “wrong bees” article, and walks five of the seven bee families — Apidae (long-horned, digger, small carpenter bees), Megachilidae (leafcutter, mason, resin bees), Andrenidae (ground-nesting miners and tiny Perdita fairy bees), Halictidae (metallic green sweat bees), and Colletidae (cellophane and yellow-faced bees). She teaches the field cues that separate bees from wasps and flies — four clear wings versus two, the fly’s club-shaped halteres, the wasp’s hairless pinched waist, and the pollen-carrying scopa on females — then covers the solitary, ground-nesting life history (about 75% of the year spent as a pupa) and free guides such as Bees of North Carolina.
Dr. Kris Braman (UGA, professor emerita) takes the research half. Her lab’s 50-property study found 111 bee species (~20% of Georgia’s ~540), with up to 83% forest-associated; an eight-site Athens study added 122 species and showed forest edges beating interiors. She reports that bee houses fill mostly with exotics (giant resin bee, Osmia taurus) rather than natives, that the Asian needle ant is suspected in a wood-nesting bee decline of as much as 70% over a decade, and that an erosion-mitigation flower planting drew 33 times more bees than grass alone. She closes on five simple habitat steps and “plant more trees for the bees.”
Viewing Notes for Asynchronous Use
- Total runtime is 1:12:05. The natural split is the presenter handoff at 34:19 — Bratcher’s identification half before, Braman’s research-and-conservation half after.
- For census prep and getting started, Bratcher’s family tour and field-cue segments (9:38–24:41) are the core identification foundation for filling the small-bee box.
- For a home-gardener / habitat audience, Braman’s block from 48:52 (Do bee houses help?) through 1:01:02 (Choosing flowers and native plants) plus her five simple things (59:26) is a self-contained habitat guide.
- The Q&A runs in two parts — Amanda’s at 28:23 and the joint Q&A from 1:04:43 to the end — and holds the highest-value practical exchanges: soil and mulch for ground-nesters, the stem-cutting method, and early-spring forage. Full chapter list is in the website archive version for this session.
Pull These for Discussion
- The “wrong bees” framing: the census counts small native bees, not just the honey bee — a useful hook for volunteers who default to honey bees.
- Bee vs. wasp vs. fly: four clear wings vs. a fly’s two-plus-halteres, the wasp’s hairless pinched waist, and the female’s pollen-carrying scopa. This is the single most practical identification takeaway.
- Bee houses can mislead: the boxes fill with exotics (giant resin bee, Osmia taurus), not the native community, and parasites build up if houses are left too long. Gardeners who bought a bee house need to hear this.
- Stems must be cut, not just left: trim to 18–24 inches, keep them attached and off the ground; shorter stems bias toward male-only eggs. Counters the common “just leave everything standing” advice.
- “Plant more trees for the bees”: Georgia’s bees are heavily forest-associated, and early-blooming trees (maples, willows) feed the first spring bees. A strong argument for keeping native trees, not just flower beds.
Resources to Share
- Great Southeast Pollinator Census — August 21–22, 2026.
- Bees of North Carolina: An Identification Guide — Youngsteadt & Levenson; free PDF online, ~$10 in print from UNC Press.
- The Bees in Your Backyard and The Solitary Bees — plain-English and technical references, respectively.
- discoverlife.org — state-by-state bee species checklists; state Natural Heritage programs also keep checklists.
- Sam Droege / USGS Native Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab — the bee macro-photography source shown in the session.
- Amanda Bratcher’s North Carolina insect counting and identification guide — free to use; to be shared with Becky Griffin for the course website.
Processed for UGA Center for Urban Agriculture / Great Southeast Pollinator Course Archives
Source: Stage 2 Archive Package — GTBOP_Archive_Summary_2026-07-07_SmallBees.md