Bee Friendly Vineyards
“Land, then, is not merely soil;
it is a foundation of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants, and animals.”
Bee Friendly Vineyards curators value healthy soil, beautiful grapes, and complex wines, as well as ecological, financial, and community health. Our partners create functional, resilient landscapes by building better bee habitat in and around their vines.
Our partners understand that continued pesticide use is not only building pest resistance, but also killing pest’s natural predators. Bees pollinate the plants that draw in beneficial predators such as lady beetles, green lacewings, soldier beetles and Anagyrus (a parasitic wasp for the vine mealybug).
Bees have an important and undervalued role outside of cash crop pollination services. They are also essential in building soil health, though ensuring 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 loop of environmental function coming back together.
As much as you need bees, bees need you. A recent systematic review by the Center for Biological Diversity found that among native bee species with sufficient data to assess, more than half are in decline, and 1 in 4 is imperiled and at increasing risk of extinction. In addition, year-after-year honey bee surveys show colonies to perish at an unsustainable rate. Sustainable losses for the US’s littlest livestock, who work hard to pollinate 1/3 bites of our food, is 13%. Our nation’s average often tops a 40-50% loss, putting the financial, emotional, and energetic balance onto the backs of beekeepers.
By providing habitat for bees in vineyards, we are both creating resilience in wine grape farming systems and a refugia for our bees.
Bee Regenerative’s Bee Friendly Vineyard program works shoulder-to-shoulder with vineyard managers and wine makers. We learn, fail, and grow as partners for healthy bees and delectable wine by experimenting with methods to:
Reduce and eliminate soil tillage (did you know around 70% of native bees live in nests in the soil?!)
Eliminate pesticides that harm bees (and people, too)
Increase biodiversity in and around the vineyards through planting pollinator-friendly plants (bunchgrasses and flowering forbs)
Educate consumers on the importance of choosing wine labels that prioritize environmental health
Create “Bee Habitat in Cyanotype” art works to display in galleries and wine tasting rooms to educate the public on the importance of bees, regenerative agriculture, and our “Bee Friendly Vineyard” projects
Celebrate our project partners by curating events and social media campaigns to highlight their wines and educate our community on the importance of “Bee Friendly Vineyards”
“The people and the passion behind BGO/Bee Regenerative is what initially drew me to the organization. It quickly became apparent that as farmers our values were aligned with those of Bee Regenerative… we too value regeneration, complexity, resilience and community. With a strong commitment to ecological farming there was no question of joining BR and collaborating on our regenerative efforts. Sarah & her team not only have an incredibly knowledgeable scientific background, but unlike many that knowledge is balanced with a deep understanding that in nature everything is interconnected creating a web of beautiful complexity that science may not be able to completely explain. This open-minded, ecologically focused approach to bee & pollinator habitat restoration is one of the many things that I believe sets BR apart from others working in this space.
What I especially love about BR is that they are actively out there with a true ‘boots on the ground’ approach to enhancing bee & pollinator populations on working lands across the Western US. They are tackling this difficult, yet incredibly important mission through multiple creative angles that are based on and within natural systems. Equally important is the work that BR does to educate everyone from children to consumers and the farmers & ranchers that we all have a part to play in this collaborative effort to save our bees & pollinators- we really do need all hands-on deck!
BR has helped me find the space and place in which I can have a positive impact on bee & pollinator population and habitat restoration in viticulture. I am passionate and excited to be collaborating with the amazing team at Bee Regenerative on nature-positive ways to increase biodiversity of all life forms while creating and expanding ecological refugia in vineyards.
- Nicole Dooling, Mariah Vineyards
Bee Friendly Vineyards Partner
Our Partners, Present & Past
We are a family owned and operated vineyard and estate winery making all of our wines from our own high elevation, dry-farmed grapes. We are farming our grapes organically with an integrative and holistic approach that spans beyond sustainability. Farming regeneratively, we are mindfully adapting our farming practices to be in harmony with the natural ecosystems of our land.
Holistically managing our vineyard using organic and regenerative farming practices we are promoting ecological life and biodiversity while farming in coordination with our natural ecosystem.
In 2020 Mariah Vineyards partnered with the Savory Institute to pilot their Land to Market Ecological Outcome Verification program for vineyards worldwide. We are proud to be the first regenerative vineyard for Savory’s Global Land to Market Verified program and are dedicated to helping expand regenerative viticulture.
Ashland’s original craft winery since 1988, Weisinger Family Winery makes small-lot artisan wines exclusively from the fruit of local vineyards. We believe that great wines reflect the unique terroir and character of the place they come from.
All of our wines are made from locally sourced, sustainably grown fruit, within a 5 mile radius in Ashland’s Bear Creek Valley. We believe that this area produces some of the best wine grapes in the region.
Bear Creek Valley is one of the most geologically diverse places in Oregon, with bands of granite, sandstone, and clay, often in the same vineyard. All of the aspects of the soil, slope and altitude come together to create our unique terroir.
Sound & Vision Wine Co. was started in 2018 on a nestled hillside, with dappled sunlight, an artist’s vision and… ugh, whatever…
The truth is- the best wines come from good people doing yeoman’s work; letting nature, vineyard, and vintage dictate what a wine truly has to say. Sound & Vision is an exercise in minimalism - Minimizing inputs in the vineyard and the winery to allow the truest expression of varietal and site to shine through.
Working with small lots of often esoteric varietals, the ultimate goal is to farm and/or source fruit from the most distinctive vineyards in the Rogue Valley and beyond and let them sing.
Troon Vineyard is Oregon’s only Demeter Biodynamic and Regenerative Organic Certified® winery and farm, and it is one of four farms in the world to be Regenerative Organic Gold Certified®. Life on our farm includes cider apples, a vegetable garden, hay fields, re-wilded honeybees, sheep, chickens, wildlife, dogs, humans and, of course, grapevines. We are dedicated to healing our planet while crafting complex, land-to-table wines that clearly speak of our place in Oregon’s Applegate Valley.
Trisaetum is a family-owned and operated winery located in the heart of the Ribbon Ridge AVA. Trisaetum’s dry-farmed fruit comes from founders Andrea and James Frey’s three estate vineyards: a 22-acre vineyard in the Yamhill-Carlton AVA, a 17-acre vineyard in the Ribbon Ridge AVA, and an 8-acre vineyard in the Dundee Hills AVA. Founder James Frey is also the winemaker, crafting Trisaetum’s wines in the winery located at the Ribbon Ridge Estate outside Newberg. When James is not making wine, he paints and waxes poetic about patron saints he wishes existed.
Each of Trisaetum’s estate vineyards preserve at least 50% of the natural habitat since a vibrant, healthy, ecosystem creates a healthier vineyard and more complex wines. A farm that is nothing but grapevines becomes a monoculture that can easily lose its sense of place.
Hope Well is not simply the wish of an optimistic philosophy. Hope Well is an imperative. It is the insistence that hope without action is hope without hope.
Hope Well is a noun AND a verb.
Literally, Hope Well is a beautiful place where I live and work. It is where my children run with bare feet, where lush swaths of native habitat are the architectural foundation of a rich, textural landscape. It is where the roots of grapevines stretch and mingle with the roots of a full and diverse ground cover, twining, sharing and passing on the great secrets of a place in time through miles of silvery, tubular threads of mycorrhizal fungi. It is where those whispering tapestries, knotted and woven, are cradling, sustaining, and growing a magnificent subterranean fabric of vertebrates, invertebrates, plants, fungi, bacteria. It is a place where human animals labor with sheep, llamas, alpacas and goats to do the true good work of careful stewardship and humble attendance.
Tucked in the scenic foothills at the convergence of the Cascade & Siskiyou Mountains, Irvine & Roberts Vineyards invites you to relish in our singular wines and golden panoramas. Come spend an afternoon with us, just 5 miles from the heart of downtown Ashland and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in untouched open space as far as the eye can see.
As keepers of the land for this moment in time, environmental stewardship is a core tenet of our work. Taking thoughtful steps to sustain this place for future generations, we’ve implemented organic practices and planted regenerative cover crops. Our collaboration with local ecologists has created a feast for pollinators, creating a nurturing ecosystem for the vineyards. Our commitment to L.I.V.E. and Salmon Safe certifications ensures this land will continue to thrive with healthy earth and clear water.
