Webinar Date: July 14, 2026
Speakers: Dr. Jamie Ellis, Professor of Entomology, University of Georgia (host of Two Bees in a Podcast); Bethany O’Rear, Alabama Cooperative Extension System — Alabama State Coordinator, Great Southeast Pollinator Census
Moderator: Becky Griffin, UGA Extension (course host; co-host Rich Braman behind the scenes)
Duration: 1:16:58
Series: Great Southeast Pollinator Course
Credit: No applicator CEU. Educators who attended the live session earned 1 PLU.
About This Session
Week Five pairs a research beekeeper with a home-garden educator, holding to the course’s biology-first, garden-second pattern. Dr. Jamie Ellis opened six weeks into his move from the University of Florida back to the University of Georgia, where he now runs an entomology program with more than 30 active honey bee research projects. He held his half to a deliberate 30 minutes around one idea: a colony is a superorganism, a level of biology above the individual bee, and like any organism it wants only to survive and reproduce. Colony-level reproduction is swarming, and he tracked it step by step — the old queen slimmed to flying weight, half the workers leaving in a cluster, scout bees canvassing tree hollows and wall voids and dancing harder for better sites, then the swarm committing to one cavity and moving in like a hermit crab into a new shell. Swarming times to the spring nectar flow because a bare “baby” colony carrying nothing needs abundant resources to build comb. Ellis explained why bees dehydrate nectar, which is roughly 80% water, into honey, which is roughly 80% sugar: drying it stops fermentation and shrinks the storage volume. He described the nest in three dimensions — a squashed-basketball brood area jacketed in pollen with honey stacked above — then walked the colony through summer thermoregulation at about 94.5°F against rising Varroa pressure, fall fattening and drone eviction, and a winter cluster that is quietly “pregnant,” rearing brood as the red maples begin to bloom.
Bethany O’Rear of the Alabama Cooperative Extension took the home-garden half, framed for August census volunteers. The honey bee is the smaller bee next to bumble and carpenter bees, with a narrow head, alternating stripes, and a fuzzy golden-brown abdomen — worker about a half inch, drone two-thirds, queen three-quarters. She detailed what bees forage for — large compound flowers, single blooms with short floral tubes, big swathes of one plant — and where to add it across the seasons, from cover crops like canola and crimson clover to redbud, tulip poplar, native (not tropical) milkweed, sourwood, and fall goldenrod. Natives run about four times more attractive than non-natives; nativars, in Doug Tallamy’s phrasing, “it depends.” She closed on shallow water dishes and an IPM approach that keeps pesticides a last resort — softest chemistries, dusk timing, the EPA bee-advisory box, no dusts or systemics — and the reminder that every garden, down to a patio of pots, can help.
The joint Q&A covered how far honey bees range to forage, how a split colony raises a new queen, honey bees crowding hummingbird feeders, whether plants refill nectar through the day, what “brood” means, capturing swarms, and the invasive yellow-legged hornet now established near Savannah.
Chapters (Video Timestamps)
0:00 Welcome and honey bee session intro
1:25 Dr. Jamie Ellis: a lifelong beekeeper’s background
3:29 Meet the western honey bee (Apis mellifera)
5:20 What every organism wants: survive and reproduce
7:03 The colony as a superorganism
8:37 Swarming: how a colony reproduces
11:16 Scout bees find and choose a new home
13:18 Nectar, wax, and building comb
16:37 The three-dimensional nest
19:23 Turning nectar into honey
22:09 Summer: heat and Varroa
24:34 Fall: packing on honey and evicting drones
26:57 Winter: the pregnant colony
28:55 Threats to bees and recap
30:33 Q&A with Dr. Ellis: winter queens and mating
32:28 Why honey bees store honey when most bees don’t
33:32 Purple honey and kudzu
35:35 How much honey to leave a hive
36:45 Bethany O’Rear: the home gardener’s view
38:19 Identifying honey bees for the census
39:45 What honey bees need: shelter, food, water
40:35 Pollen and nectar as food
43:47 What bees look for in a flower
45:03 Where to add bee forage
48:00 Native, nativar, or non-native?
50:35 Planting trees, shrubs, and meadows
53:53 Cover crops for the vegetable garden
55:15 Warm-season and all-year bloomers
56:21 Winter and early-spring blooms
58:05 Summer blooms and milkweed cautions
59:10 Fall blooms: Clethra, asters, goldenrod
59:46 Water sources for bees
1:00:48 Protecting bees: IPM and pesticides
1:04:15 Best management practices
1:06:21 Joint Q&A: researching nativars
1:07:33 How far honey bees travel to forage
1:08:23 How a split colony makes a new queen
1:10:09 Honey bees at hummingbird feeders
1:11:44 Do plants make more nectar daily?
1:13:00 What “brood” means
1:13:47 Capturing swarms
1:14:18 The invasive yellow-legged hornet
1:16:06 Closing and next week: flies and wasps
Questions & Answers
Q: What does it mean when people say a honey bee colony is “swarming”?
A: Swarming is how a colony reproduces — it is not an attack. The old queen is fed down to flying weight and leaves the nest with about half the workers; they land in a cluster on a branch while scout bees look for a new cavity, then the whole group flies to the chosen site and moves in. As Ellis put it, when you watch a colony swarm, you are watching a colony give birth.
Q: How do scout bees pick the new home?
A: Scouts fly out from the clustered swarm and inspect cavities — holes in trees, wall voids, chimneys — noting things like height off the ground, entrance direction, and volume. Back on the surface of the cluster they dance to advertise what they found, dancing more vigorously for better cavities, and the swarm settles on the best available option before flying to it in unison.
Q: Why do bees convert nectar into honey instead of just storing the nectar?
A: Two reasons. Nectar is roughly 80% water and 20% sugar, and wet sugar ferments, so bees drive off water until it is about 80% sugar to give it shelf life. Drying it also shrinks the volume — the same amount of sugar takes far less comb space as honey than as nectar.
Q: How can a queen lay eggs in late winter when the drones were evicted in fall?
A: A queen mates only once, in spring, at about 10 to 14 days old. On that flight she mates with 15 to 20 drones from other colonies and stores their sperm in a special organ for the rest of her life. So a queen laying in late winter is fertilizing eggs from semen she banked the previous spring. Ellis added a trivia note: unfertilized eggs become drones, so a drone has a mother but no father.
Q: Why do honey bees make honey when most bees don’t?
A: Of the roughly 20,000 bee species, most are solitary and don’t survive winter as adults — they overwinter as immatures in tubes or in the ground. Even social bumblebees overwinter only as single mated queens. Honey bees are among the few that overwinter as a full colony of thousands, so they need stored honey to burn for heat through the winter.
Q: Why is some honey purple?
A: Every plant species adds its own secondary compounds to its nectar, and those give each honey its particular color, smell, and flavor. Purple honey comes from a plant whose nectar carries that tint. In the Southeast the invasive kudzu is a common source — confirmed by pollen analysis of purple honey brought over from Alabama — though Ellis noted at least one other plant can produce it too.
Q: How much honey should a beekeeper leave on the hive?
A: Roughly 50 to 70 pounds year-round, about the size of one medium super. A beekeeper manages a colony to make more honey than it needs, leaves that super for the bees, and harvests the surplus supers.
Q: How far will honey bees travel to find nectar?
A: They prefer to forage within about 300 yards of the hive but will routinely go five to eight miles out. A five-mile radius works out to roughly an 80-square-mile foraging area around a single colony — because their colonies live year to year, honey bees are pickier than most bees and will range far for large volumes of high-quality nectar.
Q: What should census volunteers look for to identify a honey bee?
A: Compared with bumble and carpenter bees, honey bees are the smaller bee, with a narrow head, brown-and-black alternating stripes, and a fuzzy golden-brown abdomen that often carries visible pollen. By caste, workers run about a half inch, drones about two-thirds of an inch, and the queen about three-quarters of an inch.
Q: Native plants, nativars, or non-natives — which should I plant for bees?
A: Native plants have been shown to be about four times more attractive to pollinators than non-natives. A nativar is a cultivated variety of a native, and whether it helps is, in Doug Tallamy’s phrasing, “it depends” — some lose value when they’re bred for looks such as double petals or altered flower color, while others are as good as or better than the straight native. O’Rear’s guidance is to research the specific plant and aim for balance.
Q: If I have to use a pesticide, when should I spray and what should I avoid?
A: Spray at dusk, after bees have left the flowers, and avoid treating blooming plants when you can. Start with the softest chemistries, look for the EPA bee-advisory box on the label, and skip dusts — which cling to bees’ hairs and get carried back to the colony — and systemics, which move up into the blooms. O’Rear’s caution: organic does not automatically mean safe for pollinators.
Q: How badly is the invasive yellow-legged hornet expected to hurt bees?
A: Ellis was candid that no one knows for certain yet. The yellow-legged hornet is an invasive species from Asia found near Savannah, Georgia, in August 2023, and it is now in South Carolina as well. Europe has fought it for about 20 years with limited success, and the results there have not been pretty. It eats bees and does real damage, so it is expected to be a problem in the Southeast; Georgia and South Carolina agriculture departments are working to locate and eradicate nests, and Ellis expects it to be a major part of his early extension work at UGA.
Resources
Referenced in the presentation:
- Two Bees in a Podcast — Dr. Jamie Ellis’s honey bee podcast; Becky Griffin noted a link will be shared with attendees.
- EPA bee-advisory box — the icon on pesticide labels flagging products with application restrictions to protect bees and other pollinators.
- Native (not tropical) milkweed, sourwood, and goldenrod — among the seasonal forage plants O’Rear recommended for a bee garden.
- Great Southeast Pollinator Census — August 21–22, 2026. O’Rear framed honey bee identification for volunteers counting that weekend.
- Speaker contacts — Dr. Jamie Ellis (UGA) and Bethany O’Rear (Alabama Cooperative Extension) each shared contact information on their closing slides for follow-up questions.
Processed for UGA Center for Urban Agriculture / Great Southeast Pollinator Course Archives
Source: Stage 2 Archive Package — GTBOP_Archive_Summary_2026-07-14_HoneyBees.md