Lupinus argenteus, Silvery Lupine
Artist: Sarah Red-Laird
Title: Bee Habitat in Cyanotype 55
Location: Anderson Ranch, Montana
Project: Buzz on the Range
Flower: Lupinus argenteus, Silvery Lupine
Bee: Bombus navadensis, Nevada Bumble Bee
Materials: Cyanotype, bee collection, gold leaf, barnwood
Field Season: 2023
Composed: 2024
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).
Silvery lupine isn’t part of our seed mix, but I love that it is a staple on the Anderson Ranch. It’s, in-fact toxic to livestock. However, there are so many other plants that are attractive to cows, they are not interested in eating it.
Silvery lupine is an important native plant, highly attractive to bumble bees. It’s a cold tolerant plant that comes out early in the spring, just like bumble bees! The bee featured in this piece is a Nevada bumble bee, Bombus nevadensis. This be is widely distributed throughout Montana and beyond, reaching many corners of the from Canada to Mexico. They prefer open grassy prairie, sagebrush steppe, and montane meadows. They prefer to next in ground cavities, usually that have been abandoned by rodents but are sometimes found living in ground surface cavities like grass and wood piles. These bees are what we call a “generalist,” and aren’t picky with their flower sources. You may find them pollinating Feeds on a wide variety of flowers, including Agastache, Astragalus, Balsamorhiza, Ceanothus, Cirsium, Crataegus, Dipsacus, Dodecatheon, Frasera, Helianthus, Iris, Lonicera, Lupinus, Malus, Medicago, Melilotus, Mentha, Monarda, Oxytropis, Penstemon, Phacelia, Primula, Ranunculus, Ribes, Salvia, Solidago, Spiraea, Stachys, Taraxacum, Thermopsis, Trifolium, Triteleia, Vaccinium and Vicia (Macior 1968, Beattie et al. 1973, Macior 1974, Bauer 1983, Thorp et al. 1983, Mayer et al. 2000, Ratti et al. 2008, Koch et al. 2012, Miller-Struttmann and Galen 2014, Williams et al. 2014).