Dr. Jamie Ellis (UGA) explains why a honey bee colony is a superorganism — one that reproduces by swarming, dehydrates 80%-water nectar into 80%-sugar honey, and overwinters as a “pregnant” cluster rearing brood while the red maples bloom. Bethany O’Rear (Alabama Cooperative Extension) then shows how census volunteers recognize a honey bee and what to plant, season by season, to feed one.
Week Five of the Great Southeast Pollinator Course. Ellis runs a UGA entomology program with more than 30 active honey bee research projects; O’Rear coordinates the census in Alabama. Runtime about 1 hour 17 minutes. The Great Southeast Pollinator Census runs August 21–22, 2026.
Educators attending the live session earned 1 PLU. This is the archived recording (no credit).
—
Chapters
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 Answered in This Session
What does it mean when a colony is “swarming”?
It’s how a colony reproduces, not an attack. The old queen is fed down to flying weight and leaves with about half the workers; they cluster on a branch while scout bees find a cavity, then the group flies to the chosen site together. As Ellis put it, watching a colony swarm is watching a colony give birth.
Why do bees turn nectar into honey instead of storing the nectar?
Nectar is about 80% water, and wet sugar ferments, so bees drive off water until it’s about 80% sugar to give it shelf life. Drying it also shrinks the volume — the same sugar takes far less comb space as honey than as nectar.
How can a queen lay eggs in late winter when the drones were evicted in fall?
A queen mates only once, in spring, at about 10–14 days old, storing sperm from 15–20 drones for life. A queen laying in late winter is fertilizing eggs from semen she banked the previous spring. Unfertilized eggs become drones — so a drone has a mother but no father.
What should census volunteers look for to identify a honey bee?
Next to 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 often carrying pollen. Workers run about a half inch, drones about two-thirds, the queen about three-quarters.
Native plants, nativars, or non-natives — which should I plant for bees?
Natives are 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 words, “it depends” — some lose value when bred for double petals or altered color. Research the specific plant and aim for balance.
How badly will the invasive yellow-legged hornet hurt bees?
No one knows for certain yet. The hornet, native to Asia, was found near Savannah, Georgia, in August 2023 and is now in South Carolina too. Europe has fought it for about 20 years with limited success. It eats bees, so it’s expected to be a problem here; Georgia and South Carolina are working to find and destroy nests.
—
Resources
Two Bees in a Podcast — Dr. Jamie Ellis’s honey bee podcast; a link will be shared with attendees
EPA bee-advisory box — the label icon flagging products with application restrictions to protect bees
Native (not tropical) milkweed for summer; goldenrod and asters for fall — forage O’Rear recommends
Great Southeast Pollinator Census: August 21–22, 2026
Great Southeast Pollinator Course — UGA Center for Urban Agriculture