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.
Vineyard manages are coming to 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 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% loss, putting the financial, emotional, and energetic balance onto the backs of beekeepers.
By providing habitat for bees in your vineyard, you are both creating resilience in your farming system and a refugia for our imperiled bees.
BGO’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 superior wine. Through BGO’s monitoring efforts, we work with our partners to make data-informed decisions on bee-friendly management strategies, building and engaging community from vine to glass.
Click below to explore the elements of this project.
