Webinar: Honey Bees (Great Southeast Pollinator Course, Week Five)
Webinar Date: July 14, 2026
Speakers: Dr. Jamie Ellis (Professor of Entomology, University of Georgia); Bethany O’Rear (Alabama Cooperative Extension System)
Series: Great Southeast Pollinator Course
Source: Corrected SRT (Stage 1), GTBOP_Transcript_2026-07-14_HoneyBees.srt (282 blocks); Archive Package (Stage 2) for structural reference
Audience note: Written for home gardeners, Master Gardener volunteers, and census counters. Every term, definition, and relationship below comes from what Ellis and O’Rear said in this session. Nothing is drawn from field guides or outside sources, including the unused options.
Set: Three exercises. Exercise 1 has 8 pairs and 2 distractors, Exercise 2 has 6 pairs and 2 distractors, Exercise 3 has 8 pairs and 2 distractors.
Exercise 1: Colony Vocabulary
Timestamp Reference: 6:40 – 1:13:43 (drawn from across the session)
Type: Term-to-Definition
Instructions: Match each term in Column A with the definition the speakers gave in Column B. Two items in Column B will not be used.
| # | Column A | Column B | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Superorganism | a) Plant-produced sugar water, roughly 80% water and 20% sugar, which supplies the colony’s carbohydrate | |
| 2 | Swarm | b) The technical term for the pollen basket, visible as a yellow dot on either side of a returning forager | |
| 3 | Brood | c) A level of organization above the individual bee, at which the colony behaves as the organism | |
| 4 | Nectar | d) A bee that leaves the surface of the cluster to inspect cavities, then dances on the cluster to report what it found | |
| 5 | Honey | e) The immature stages taken together, egg, larva, and pupa, all inside waxed cells | |
| 6 | Corbicula | f) A layer of pollen about one inch thick, jacketing the upper half of the brood area | |
| 7 | Drone | g) A male bee that does nothing but mate with queens, and that develops from an unfertilized egg | |
| 8 | Scout bee | h) A medium box holding roughly 50 to 70 pounds, left on the hive year-round for the bees | |
| i) Dehydrated nectar, roughly 80% sugar and 20% water, which resists fermentation and takes less space | |||
| j) The old queen and about half the workers, leaving the nest together to found a new colony |
Answer Key:
1 → c, 2 → j, 3 → e, 4 → a, 5 → i, 6 → b, 7 → g, 8 → d
Distractors: f and h. Both are real content from this session, and neither is the definition of any term in Column A. Item f is Ellis’s pollen jacket on the golf-ball brood area, a structure rather than a term. Item h is the medium super a beekeeper leaves behind at harvest.
Source in transcript: Blocks 24–28 (superorganism, 6:40–8:15); 32–34 (swarm, 9:19–10:17); 263–265 (brood, 1:13:10–1:13:43); 44–47 (nectar and its role as the carbohydrate, 13:18–14:16); 65–69 (honey, 20:10–22:05); 132 (corbicula, 41:40–42:04); 83–84 and 241 (drone, 25:42–26:21 and 1:08:46); 38–42 (scout bee, 11:16–12:49). Distractor sources: block 60 (the pollen jacket, 18:20–18:47) and block 112 (the medium super, 36:05–36:24).
Exercise 2: The Colony Through the Year
Timestamp Reference: 10:18 – 28:55 (primary coverage area)
Type: Timing-Practice
Instructions: Match each season in Column A with what Dr. Ellis said the colony is doing in Column B. Two items in Column B will not be used. Ellis’s caution applies throughout: biology is messy, so these are the typical patterns rather than fixed dates.
| # | Column A | Column B | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Early spring (typical) | a) Nectar is dehydrated into honey and stored, because the comb is finished and the reserves are for later | |
| 2 | Mid-spring | b) Beekeepers move a newly hived swarm out of the apiary for some weeks so its bees do not drift back to the parent hive | |
| 3 | Mid to late spring | c) A tight cluster burns stored honey for heat, and by late winter a small amount of brood is being reared out of sight in the center of the nest | |
| 4 | Summer | d) The swarm issues and moves into a new cavity, timed to the weeks around the start of the primary nectar flow | |
| 5 | Fall | e) Incoming nectar is converted to wax and the nest is built out; once it is built, the colony can invest in producing queens | |
| 6 | Winter | f) Workers detect eggs from an inbred mating and abort them | |
| g) Honey is packed on like fat, population and colony metabolism drop, and the drones are evicted | |||
| h) Little growth, water hauled in and fanned to cool the nest, and Varroa, viruses, and small hive beetles climbing |
Answer Key:
1 → d, 2 → e, 3 → a, 4 → h, 5 → g, 6 → c
Distractors: b and f. Both describe real events from this session, and neither belongs to a season of the colony’s year. Item b is a beekeeper’s action when hiving a captured swarm. Item f is what workers do to a queen’s eggs after an inbred mating, which is why queens leave the nest to mate at all.
Source in transcript: Blocks 34–37 and 44 (early spring swarm, 10:00–13:37); 48–54 (mid-spring wax and comb, 14:16–16:36); 63–69 (mid to late spring honey, 19:23–22:05); 70–75 (summer, 22:09–24:10); 76–86 (fall, 24:10–26:57); 87–90 (winter, 26:57–28:28). Distractor sources: blocks 271–274 (moving a hived swarm, 1:14:03–1:14:39) and block 99 (inbred eggs aborted, ~31:25–31:42).
Exercise 3: What O’Rear Said About Each Plant
Timestamp Reference: 53:53 – 59:46 (primary coverage area)
Type: Item-to-Description
Instructions: Match each plant in Column A with what Bethany O’Rear said about it in Column B. Two items in Column B will not be used.
| # | Column A | Column B | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Henbit | a) A native shrub that blooms in late summer and early fall | |
| 2 | Tulip poplar | b) An all-year bloomer that runs straight into a manicured lawn or an HOA | |
| 3 | Goldenrod | c) Blooms in winter when the grass is dormant, and is the weed many people apply a fall pre-emergent to control | |
| 4 | Tropical milkweed | d) A cool-season cover crop she photographed in the Shoals area of Alabama, she thinks in February | |
| 5 | Canola | e) A warm-season choice for a vegetable bed you are resting instead of planting | |
| 6 | Clethra | f) Blamed for allergies that ragweed, blooming at the same time, actually causes | |
| 7 | Dandelion | g) Stand near one blooming in spring and you hear a hum coming off it from all the visiting honey bees | |
| 8 | Holly | h) A spring tree whose bloom most people never stop to look at, though she put a photo of one on screen | |
| i) Identified by its tri-color bloom, sometimes mislabeled as a native at retail, and, she says, able to do real harm to monarchs | |||
| j) The tree Ellis named as the late-winter bloom that coincides with brood rearing in the Southeast |
Answer Key:
1 → c, 2 → h, 3 → f, 4 → i, 5 → d, 6 → a, 7 → b, 8 → g
Distractors: e and j. Both are real content from this session and neither describes a Column A plant. Item e is O’Rear’s sunflower and buckwheat suggestion for a resting summer bed. Item j is red maple, which she credited to Ellis in her winter list.
Source in transcript: Blocks 188–193 (henbit, 56:28–56:56); 195 (tulip poplar, 57:13–57:38); 206 (goldenrod, 59:28–59:46); 199–204 (tropical milkweed, 58:38–59:10); 179–181 (canola, 54:20–55:15); 205 (Clethra, 59:10–59:28); 182–185 (dandelion, 55:15–56:20); 195–196 (holly and the hum, 57:13–58:04).
Editorial note on item h: O’Rear’s “they’re very inconspicuous, right? Those little bitty white ones” at 57:38 sits between the tulip poplar and the holly, and the antecedent is genuinely loose on the audio. Item h therefore rests on the tulip poplar cue she states plainly (“we don’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the blooms”) and item g on the hum, which is unambiguously the holly. [VERIFY: confirm the antecedent at 57:38 against the recording if this exercise is ever expanded.] Distractor sources: block 182 (sunflowers and buckwheat, 55:15–55:40) and blocks 89 and 187 (red maple, 27:43–28:09 and 56:21–56:28).
Course Developer Notes
Exercise 1 is the one to place first in Moodle. Seven of its eight terms come back in the quiz, and a student who cannot separate nectar from honey will miss quiz questions 3 and 13. Corbicula is the exception, appearing here only, so this exercise is the sole place a student meets the word.
Exercise 3 is the census-prep exercise. It is the only activity in this set that puts the Georgia and Alabama bloom calendar in front of a volunteer, and August, the census month, sits in the dearth O’Rear describes at 47:13.
Produced for UGA Center for Urban Agriculture / Great Southeast Pollinator Course Archives
Source: Corrected SRT (Stage 1), GTBOP_Transcript_2026-07-14_HoneyBees.srt (282 blocks)