Onobrychis viciifolia, Sainfoin

Artist: Sarah Red-Laird

Title: Bee Habitat in Cyanotype 35

Location: Blake Ranch, Montana

Project: Buzz on the Range

Flower: Onobrychis viciifolia, Sainfoin

Bee: Apis mellifera, Honey bee

Materials: Cyanotype, barnwood

Field Season: 2023

Composed: 2023

This project is a collaboration with Western Sustainability Exchange that attempts to demonstrate, with our producer partners as the focus, alternative practices to promote healthy bee populations. We are working in southwestern Montana’s Paradise Valley to support a coalition of five ranchers on 8,900 acres of range. In this project we aim to find innovative ways to establish nectar and pollen producing flowers through facilitating endozoochory (dispersion of seed through ruminant dung (aka COW POO!!)) and utilizing rotational, adaptive grazing.

There is an urgent need for resilient soil, grass, and bee habitat in our rangelands. Though most of the folks that we work with love planting for bees simply because it’s fun, interesting, and the right thing to do – in order for this to be scalable, it can only be achieved through fiscally viable approaches. The Buzz on the Range project attempts to demonstrate, with ranchers as the focus (supported by BGO, MSU, and WSE), alternative practices to promote healthy bee populations, while also improving pasture plant diversity and healthy cows.

BGO is proud to support the ranchers by monitoring bee communities and flower growth, advising on seed mixes and dispersal methods, and will assist in educational material creation and teaching workshops at the conclusion of the project (once we figure out what methods and mixes work well).

I’m obsessed with sainfoin. There. I said it.

This plant seems to do it all:

🌿Feed livestock without causing bloat

🌿Produce a large nectar crop for honey bees to make honey

🌿Attracts many native bees, butterflies, and beetles

🌿Fixes soil nitrogen

🌿Builds organic matter

🌿Has natural deworming effects for sheep and goats

🌿Is absoletely gorgeous

I have included Sainfoin in all of my habitat projects, adding hopes and prayers that it comes up. It’s success has been fickle, as it loves a specific pH (between 7-8), and loves deep soils that are on the sandy side.

Walking into Alex Blake’s sainfoin field was like witnessing a dream come true. He’s grown it to perfection, and indeed - the cows, the bees, and the soil all love it.