Carum carvi, Caraway

Artist: Sarah Red-Laird

Title: Bee Habitat in Cyanotype 27

Location: Anderson Ranch, Montana

Project: Coexistence & Bee Habitat Regeneration in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem

Flower: Carum carvi, Caraway

Materials: Cyanotype, barnwood

Field Season: 2023

Composed: 2023

Beginning in 2023, BGO is starting a multi-year collaboration with the Anderson family, and three Montana ranches that they collectively manage: J Bar L in Centennial Valley, and the Anderson Ranch and Grizzly Creek in Tom Miner Basin.

In 2018 BGO’s executive program director, Sarah Red-Laird, attended a workshop at EcoFarm titled, “Range Riders: Coexisting with Predators,” featuring J Bar L Ranch’s Hilary Zaranek.  As a student in the University of Montana’s “Wilderness and Civilization” program in 2008-2009, Sarah was all-too-familiar with the dynamic between Montana ranchers and wolf re-introduction.  She hung on every word of the poetic presentation on low-stress livestock handling techniques and living within her cattle herd to protect them from bears and wolves (and vice versa, in a way), but what stuck with Sarah was the accounts of ecosystem recovery.  Sarah questioned how Jar Bar L’s management transition to predator coexistence could affect local bee communities, did they recover along with the rest of the ecosystem? 

Hilary’s experience of the return of biodiversity as a result of livestock grazing altercation and reintroduction of wolves, beaver, and bears mirrors those of similar projects in Oregon, Wyoming, and Nevada.  Though there is ample evidence to prove trophic recovery from coexistence, a rigorous long-term study specifically on bees affected by this management tactic has not been published.          

BGO is collaborating with the Anderson family to better understand the dynamic between the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem’s livestock, predators, and bees – to explore the question, could livestock/predator coexistence on rangelands be a key to diverse bee community conservation? 

This project is thanks to this little flower here because of this little flower.

This is carraway, and grizzly bears love it.

When I was here in the summer of 2022, monitoring bees for Buzz on the Range, I noticed the patches of massive disturbance on this hillside. Rancher Malou Anderson-Ramirez told me these patches were from grizzlies digging up the carraway for the tasty, nutrient dense roots. I spent some time sitting up there, observing both the fresh patches, as well as the patches from last year – which were now covered in white and alsike clover.

They were also covered in… BEES!!

Two-form bumble bees (Bombus vancouverensis) were loving the clovers on the older patches, and also buzzing the ground around the fresh patches. For what? We don’t know. The BGO team couldn’t find anything in the published literature about it.

SO!! I’ll be back summer after summer to find out.