Bee Habitat in Cyanotype at Trisaetum Winery

Oregon’s agricultural countryside boasts over 1,000 wineries and 40,000 acres of vineyards, but there is only one implementing a long-term data-informed bee habitat conservation, restoration, and education project.  Trisaetum and BGO have been collaborating through “Bee Friendly Vineyards” 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, they are an indication of the life-cycle loop coming back together. 

To celebrate the progress being made on the landscape, Trisaetum is proud to announce a permanent exhibition in our tasting room of Sarah’s “Bee Habitat in Cyanotype” collection.  There will be six seasonally rotating pieces created with flowers harvested from the Coast Range and Ribbon Ridge vineyards, and bees that are pulled from the project’s entomological collection. 

We invite you to make a plan to visit the tasting room; sip some bee-friendly wine, chat with the staff about the collaboration, and view the art.  Learn more about the creative process and the project at beegirl.org/cyanotype and about the Bee Friendly Vineyards program at beegirl.org/vineyards.

Click the photos below to learn about the pieces currently on display in the gallery.