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
Moderator: Becky Griffin, UGA Extension (course host; co-host Rich Braman behind the scenes)
Duration: 1:12:05
Series: Great Southeast Pollinator Course
Credit: No applicator CEU. Educators who attended the live session earned 1 PLU.
About This Session
Week Four pairs two presenters on the smallest bees counted in the census, following the identification-first, research-second pattern. Amanda Bratcher, horticulture agent with North Carolina Cooperative Extension and the state’s census coordinator, defines a “small bee” as anything at or below honey bee size — the catch-all box volunteers find hardest to fill. She reframes the honey bee’s fame around a January Washington Post headline (“good news, we saved the bees; bad news, we saved the wrong ones”) and works through five of the seven bee families: Apidae (long-horned and digger bees), Megachilidae (leafcutter and mason bees), Andrenidae (ground-nesting miners and pinhead-sized Perdita fairy bees), Halictidae (metallic green sweat bees such as Agapostemon and Lasioglossum), and Colletidae (cellophane bees and yellow-faced Hylaeus). Field cues anchor her half: four clear wings versus a fly’s two, the fly’s stubby antennae and club-shaped halteres, the wasp’s hairless pinched waist, and the pollen-carrying scopa that mark female bees. Most small bees, she notes, are solitary ground-nesters that spend roughly 75% of the year as pupae. She points to free guides including Bees of North Carolina by Youngsteadt and Levenson and previews the North Carolina counting-and-identification guide she will share with Becky.
Dr. Kris Braman, professor emerita of entomology at the University of Georgia, takes the research half. Her lab’s 50-property pan-trap study collected nearly 5,000 bees across 111 species — about 20% of Georgia’s roughly 540 species — with up to 83% of them forest-associated and 26% found exclusively in forest. An eight-site Athens study added 122 species and showed forest edges outperforming interiors, with 30 species of Andrena and 17 species of Nomada among them. Bee houses, she cautions, fill mostly with exotics like the giant resin bee (Megachile sculpturalis) and Osmia taurus rather than natives, and 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. A floral erosion-mitigation planting — black-eyed Susan, partridge pea, rattlesnake master, coreopsis, and mountain mint — drew 33 times more bees than grass alone, with Lasioglossum, Halictus, and Bombus the most abundant. Braman closes on five simple habitat steps and her refrain: plant more trees for the bees.
The joint Q&A covered soil and mulch for ground-nesting bees, why exotic bees dominate bee houses, the stem-cutting question in detail (trim to 18–24 inches, keep stems attached and off the ground), and what early-spring bees eat before most flowers bloom.
Chapters (Video Timestamps)
0:00 Welcome and speaker introductions
1:37 Amanda Bratcher: why small bees matter
2:21 A backyard taken over by ground-nesting bees
4:40 What counts as a small bee — the ‘wrong bees’ problem
6:21 Building bee ID skills; ~600 NC species
8:04 Bees within Hymenoptera: wasps, ants, and true bees
9:38 The five main bee families and free ID guides
12:15 ID clues: pollen hairs (scopa) and wing venation
13:37 Telling male from female bees
14:47 Apidae and Megachilidae: fuzzy bees, leafcutters, masons
16:59 Mining bees, sweat bees, and cellophane bees
21:36 Telling bees from wasps
22:49 Telling bees from flies (halteres)
24:41 Small bee life cycle and metamorphosis
26:17 Where small bees nest; trimming stems
27:11 Solitary, social, and cuckoo bees
28:23 Q&A with Amanda: sweat bees, cuckoo bees, stems
34:19 Introducing Dr. Kris Braman
36:14 Small bees as urban VIPs
39:03 50-property study: 111 species and the value of forests
41:45 Athens eight-site study: forest edge vs. interior
42:47 What kind of bees live in cities?
45:28 Andrena and Nomada bees
47:50 A ground-nesting bee spectacle (video)
48:52 Do bee houses help? Exotic bees take over
51:19 Leafcutter leaf damage and tolerating messiness
53:10 Asian needle ant and wood-nesting bee decline
53:59 Flowers for tough sites: 33x more bees
55:33 Bee-to-flower networks
57:58 Grasses and specialist bees
59:26 Five simple things to help bees
1:01:02 Choosing flowers and native plants
1:03:58 Helping people adopt conservation
1:04:43 Q&A: soil for ground-nesting bees
1:05:57 More Q&A: coneflower damage and bee houses
1:07:42 Stem-cutting explained (Amanda)
1:10:07 What early-spring bees eat: trees for the bees
1:11:00 Closing and next week: Honey Bees
Questions & Answers
Q: Why are they called sweat bees?
A: They are drawn to the salt in human sweat. People most often meet them when the bees land to harvest salt off their arms while they are sweating, which is where the common name comes from.
Q: How do I tell a small bee from a wasp in the garden?
A: Wasps are generally hairless and have a very thin, sharply defined waist between the thorax and abdomen, because they aren’t carrying pollen for their young. Bees usually carry pollen hairs and often fold their wings when perched, while wasps generally don’t — though Amanda notes that wing-folding cue isn’t universal.
Q: How do I tell a bee from a fly?
A: A fly has only two wings, plus a pair of club-shaped halteres behind them, where a bee has four clear wings. Flies also tend to have large eyes covering most of the head, very short antennae, and a faster, jerkier flight than bees.
Q: How can I tell whether a bee is male or female?
A: If it has a stinger, it’s a female. The clearest cue is the pollen-carrying hairs (scopa): females gather pollen to feed their young, so they carry those hairs on the abdomen or hind legs, while males generally lack them and are often hairier overall.
Q: What is a cuckoo bee, and why that name?
A: The name references the cuckoo bird. Cuckoo bees don’t gather their own pollen and nectar; they lay eggs in another bee’s nest, and the cuckoo larva kills the host’s larva (or, in social species, the queen) and takes the pollen provision. Amanda notes that when both the cuckoo bee and its host persist together, it actually signals a healthy ecosystem with enough resources to support both.
Q: Where do most small bees nest?
A: Most nest in the soil — about 70% of species in North Carolina — with a smaller share in wood and stems and relatively few in cavities. Even the ground-nesters that cluster in aggregations are usually solitary “single mamas” that just happen to nest near one another.
Q: When and how should I cut back perennial stems for stem-nesting bees?
A: Leave stems standing over winter, but they do need to be cut — the research found bees use cut stems, ideally trimmed to 18 to 24 inches and left attached to the plant. Shorter stems tend to produce more male-only eggs, so longer stems give more diversity, and you should keep stems high and dry rather than laying them on the ground, where fungi and bacteria from the soil can saturate the stem and trap the bees.
Q: What kind of soil supports ground-nesting bees?
A: Braman recommends native soil in general, with some builders adding sand depending on the species they hope to attract. She also suggests limiting typical mulch, since gravel mulch and gravel pathways tend to be compatible with soil-nesting bees while still letting them reach the soil.
Q: Do bee houses actually help native bees?
A: They colonize well, but Braman’s studies found the boxes fill mostly with exotic bees — the giant resin bee (Megachile sculpturalis) and the exotic mason bee Osmia taurus — rather than representing the native community. Osmia taurus emerges first and dominates the resource, and giant resin bees are aggressive enough to pull carpenter bees from their nests; she also warns against leaving houses up too long because parasites like Melittobia wasps can build up.
Q: Which flowers bring the most bees to a tough or eroded site?
A: In an erosion-mitigation planting, black-eyed Susan, partridge pea, rattlesnake master, coreopsis, and mountain mint all established well and attracted pollinators. Adding those flowers produced 33 times more bees than a grass area alone, with Lasioglossum, Halictus, and Bombus the most abundant groups.
Q: What can early-spring bees eat before most flowers are blooming?
A: Early-blooming trees are the key resource — Braman points to maples and willows in particular. Native woodland ephemerals in the ground layer also help, which is part of why she keeps returning to “trees for the bees.”
Q: What are a few simple things anyone can do to help small bees?
A: Braman offers five: tolerate a little messiness in the yard, make sure bees have access to water, leave some bare spots for ground-nesting bees, leave stems standing so stem-nesting bees have a home, and plant a cottage garden with color all season instead of a formal one. Her sixth refrain is to plant more trees for the bees.
Resources
Referenced in the presentation:
- Bees of North Carolina: An Identification Guide — Dr. Elsa Youngsteadt and Dr. Hannah Levenson; free PDF online, or a print copy for a little over $10 from UNC Press.
- The Bees in Your Backyard — recommended plain-English field reference with photographs.
- The Solitary Bees — a more technical reference on solitary-bee diversity.
- Sam Droege / USGS Native Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab (Maryland) — source of the bee macro-photography shown.
- discoverlife.org — state-by-state bee species checklists; state Natural Heritage programs also maintain species checklists.
- Amanda Bratcher’s North Carolina insect counting and identification guide — free to use; will be shared with Becky Griffin for the course website.
- Great Southeast Pollinator Census — August 21–22, 2026. Participants count pollinators to monitor population trends.
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