Eschscholzia californica, Bombus

Artist: Sarah Red-Laird

Title: Bee Habitat in Cyanotype 19

Location: Trisaetum’s Coast Range Vineyard, Oregon

Flower: Eschscholzia californica, California Poppy 

Bee: Bombus, Bumble Bee

Materials: Cyanotype, encaustic, ink, barnwood

Field Season: 2021

Composed: 2023

Trisaetum Winery and BGO have been collaborating through the “Bee Friendly Vineyards” program since 2019.  This is a vintner and melittologist-driven collaboration led by Trisaetum’s James Frey and BGO’s Sarah Red-Laird.

Together they are letting data collected from the vineyard’s soil, grapes, bees, flowers, and microbiology inform management decisions. They believe that a vineyard can concurrently produce stellar fruit and create an ecological refugia for some of our most important (and imperiled) pollinators – the bees.

Our collaboration has resulted in decreasing chemical inputs and increasing wildflowers through planting seeds along fencerows and headlands and reducing, or eliminating, mowing and tillage in and around the vineyards. 

Because grapes are self-pollinating, vineyard managers often don’t consider creating pollinator-friendly landscapes.  However, bees have an important and undervalued role outside of cash crop pollination services.  They are also essential in building soil health, though ensuring the reproduction of plants that fix nitrogen naturally and support healthy mycorrhiza communities, essential in grapevine production. 

Bees are an indicator species of a healthy vineyard and an in-tact environment.  Ecologically speaking, a healthy community of bees is an indication of the life-cycle loop coming back together. 

Learn more about the winery here, and make sure to visit for a tasting on your next trip to Oregon’s Willamette Valley wine country!

California poppy, Eschscholzia californica, is an iconic west coast flower - made (more) famous by influencers flocking to Bear Valley and the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve during the last “superbloom” event of 2019.

Well before this flower was in our social media feeds, it was adored and utilized by the native people of what is now called Southern California.

“Lizard described to Coyote the California poppies out on the islands: “When you see it, it is as if the sun itself is on the ground.””

- Chumash Ethnobotany, by Janice Timbroo

This flower is a match made in heaven for bumble bees, Bombus, which is it’s most common pollinator, but in Trisaetum Winery’s vineyards, we’ve also observed honey bees, Apis mellifera, small carpenter bees, Ceratina, yellow-faced bees, Hylaeus, and sweat bees, Lasioglossum, loving on this flower.

I encourage anyone on the west coast to cover their properties with this flower — which will give you a burst of joy and the bees a burst of nutrition in the most arid of landscapes. California poppies are like the succulents of the flower world, the more your ignore them, the better they do. Read this article from the Spruce on Cal poppy propagation.