Progress report for OW22-371
Project Information
The expansion of vineyards in the Pacific Northwest has the potential to negatively impact semi-natural areas rich in biodiversity that are key to pollinators and other organisms. This impact however, may be offset by vineyards willing to make investments in providing on-farm habitat vital for bees. While bee-habitat may not contribute to overall production, vineyards in the Western U.S. have shown a high level of adoption of farm practices of conservation concern, particularly when coupled to environmental certification initiatives. There is growing interest among vineyards to incorporate bee friendly farming into their practices, but relatively few acres certified to date. Our project looks to bridge the gaps between bee friendly vineyard practices, bee biodiversity, and public recognition of the efforts being made to protect bees through a mix of research and targeted outreach. Our team proposes to do this by evaluating existing on-farm habitat using new plant inventory and bee monitoring tools, promoting bee-friendly vineyards at wine tasting rooms through new Extension and outreach tools, and aiding the adoption of our habitat evaluation and bee friendly farming promotion tools beyond the project team through an on-farm Bee-Friendly Viticulture Field Day.
The project has two research objectives:
Objective 1: Evaluation of nectar and pollen resources in Oregon vineyards and compare it to top bee-plants found within the American Viticultural Areas (AVAs) where the vineyard is located.
Objective 2: Native bee monitoring on vineyards to establish a baseline for bee biodiversity from which to evaluate restoration efforts.
The project has three education objectives:
Objective 3: Developing a bee-friendly farm management plan for each cooperating vineyard based on the findings of objectives 1 and 2.
Objective 4: Create public outreach material and host public events on bee-friendly farming practices at the tasting rooms of cooperating vineyards.
Objective 5: Host Oregon's first Bee-Friendly Viticulture Field Day.
Cooperators
- - Producer
- - Technical Advisor (Educator and Researcher)
- - Producer
- - Producer
- - Producer
- - Producer
- - Producer
Research
Objective 1: Evaluation of nectar and pollen resources in Oregon vineyards
We hypothesize that vineyards contain a significant subset of important bee plants typically found within a region within uncultivated areas. In order to test this hypothesis, we propose a method for characterizing bee plant diversity that can be readily implemented by viticulturalists, crop consultants, and winery tasting-room patrons. The method will be developed through an iNaturalist Collection Project, which aggregates all iNaturalist observations of blooming plants within the boundaries of a given vineyard. Using this platform, photo-vouchers will be collected from April-October 2022 and 2023 from all flowering bee-attractive plants in vineyards and on semi-natural farm headlands. For each blooming plant species, a minimum of three photos will be obtained, including a leaf detail, a flower detail, and a zoomed out image showing the plant in its surroundings to facilitate plant identification (25). Photo-voucher records will be provided from three different sources: 1) bi-weekly surveys project staff, 2) daily records produced by farm staff and crop consultants, and 3) images collected by patrons of vineyard tasting rooms during either a spring (June) or summer (August) bioblitz event (described in detail under Education Plan). All observers will be instructed to accept the Family level machine-learning plant identification provided by iNaturalist, as accuracy at this level of taxonomic detail is typically accurate (26). All records will be reviewed by project staff to ensure correct plant identification to the genus or species level.
Records collected from the vineyards will be compared to regional plant data using methods modified from Dolezal et al. (27). We will develop a regional pool of bee-attractive plants within each of the American Viticultural Areas (AVAs) in the study area (there are a total of six AVAs in the Willamette Valley) by assembling a list of plants within each AVA using all contemporary records (i.e., since 2010) from Oregon Flora and iNaturalist. Since the later dataset lacks authoritative determinations, we will use it to the family-level. Next we will use plant-host data from the 2018-2020 Oregon Bee Atlas to identify specific plant genera within each AVA that either have consistently broad genera of bees associated with it, are associated with rare bees, or which have records for bees with narrow host ranges. We will compare bee-plant species richness and species evenness at each of the five vineyards and determine the number of important bee plants, found in the AVA area, that are missing at each vineyard.
Objective 2: Native bee monitoring
We predict that farms with a higher bee-plant diversity (objective 1) will also have more abundant and reproductively successful native bees. To test this hypothesis, but also to provide the producers with a metric for measuring the effectiveness of their overall bee conservation efforts, we will monitor for native bees across the season at all vineyards for two seasons. Past work to document the native bees of Oregon farm land conducted during the Oregon Bee Project Flagship Farm program relied on blue vane traps (28). While these traps are effective at detecting rare species, they result in high processing costs (29). An alternative approach that the Oregon State University Pollinator Health lab has been developing involves inexpensive and easy to process cavity nest blocks. The traps consist of bundles of cardboard straws, with three different diameters, housed in a PVC pipe and suspended on posts. Recently, these same traps were shown to be effective at differentiating between Michigan cherry and blueberry farms with and without flowering strips established to support bee populations (19). Moreover, the PI has established a taxonomic reference collection for the native bees that live in these straws, which will allow us to quickly identify the bees nesting in the straws at each farm. Finally, by counting the number of straws of each species at each location we will be able to estimate the relative reproductive rate for each species at each site. Bee nest traps will be placed throughout all 5 vineyard sites starting in early in the Spring. A minimum of 5 traps will be used at each vineyard. Traps will be removed in September and brought to OSU. Straws will be removed from traps and incubated at 29°C for up to 4 weeks. The emerging bees will be identified by a native bee taxonomic authority at Oregon State University (Lincoln Best). Species richness and abundance at each site will be compared to vineyard specific plant data.
Research Outcomes
Objective 1: Evaluation of nectar and pollen resources in Oregon vineyards
The data used for our analysis comprised a total of 2,626 plant records were collected from 15 vineyards across crop headlands. A total of 135 plant genera were included in our analysis. A total of 31 vineyards had active iNaturalist projects associated with the project.
Abacela Vineyards and Winery (40 species of plants identified - joined in 2024): https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/abacela-vineyards-and-winery
Abbey Road Farm (39 species of plants identified - joined in 2024): https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/abbey-road-farm
Alderbank Vineyards (22 species of plants identified - joined in 2025): https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/alderbanks-vineyard
Abbott Claim Vineyards (52 species of plants identified): https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/abbott-claim-vineyard
Antica Terra (118 species of plants identified - joined in 2024): https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/antica-terra
AtTheJoy Vineyard (project has not been initiated - joined in 2025): https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/atthejoy
Bee Kissed Farm (56 species of plants identified - joined in 2025): https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/bee-kissed-farm
Brooks Winery and Vineyard (82 species of plants identified - joined in 2023): https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/brooks-winery
Björnson Vineyard (1 species of plant identified - joined in 2025): https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/bjornson-vineyard
Crawford Beck Vineyard (30 species of plants identified - joined in 2024): https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/crawford-beck-vineyard
Domaine Willamette at Bernau Estate Vineyard (76 species of plants identified - joined in 2023): https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/domaine-willamette-bernau-estate-vineyard
Fairsing Vineyard (81 species of plants identified - joined in 2023): https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/fairsing-vineyard
Fennwood Vineyard (17 species of plants identified - joined in 2023): https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/fennwood-vineyard
King Estate Winery (135 species of plants identified - joined in 2023): https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/king-estate-winery-vineyard
Laughlin Road Vineyard (35 species of plants identified - joined in 2023): https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/laughlin-road-vineyard
Lingua Franca (5 species of plants identified - joined in 2025): https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/lingua-franca
Lumos Wine Company (21 species of plant identified - joined in 2024): https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/lumos-wine-company
MonksGate Vineyard (43 species of plants identified - joined in 2023): https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/monksgate-vineyard
Montinore Vineyard (18 species of plants identified - joined in 2023): https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/montinore-vineyard
Quady North (18 species of plants identified - joined in 2025): https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/quady-north
Red Barn Vineyard (18 species of plants identified - joined in 2025): https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/red-barn-vineyard
Sokol Blosser (146 species of plants identified - joined in 2023): https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/sokol-blosser-winery-flowering-plants-and-pollinators
Soter Vineyard (75 species of plants identified- joined in 2023): https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/soter-vineyards-plants-and-pollinators
Stoller Vineyard and Winery (83 species of plants identified - joined in 2023): https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/stoller-vineyard-and-winery
Three Wives Vineyard (51 species of plant identified - joined in 2024): https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/three-wives-vineyard
Tidarstar Vineyard (9 species of plant identified - joined in 2024): https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/tidalstar-vineyard
Walnut Ridge Vineyard (88 species of plants identified - joined in 2023): https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/walnut-ridge-vineyard-plants-and-pollinators
Wild Azalea Vineyard (27 species of plant identified - joined in 2024): https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/wild-azalea-vineyard
Willamette Valley Vineyard (122 species of plants identified - joined in 2023): https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/willamette-valley-vineyard-turner
Winter's Hill Estate Vineyards (97 species plant identified - joined in 2023): https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/winter-s-hill-estate-vineyard
Youngberg Hill Inn & Winery (23 species of plant identified - joined in 2024): https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/youngberg-hill-inn-winery
These plant records were related to 27,595 bee-plant interaction records collected by the Oregon Bee Atlas between 2018-2023 (https://agsci.oregonstate.edu/bee-atlas/melittoflora) within the Willamette Valley American Viticultural Areas (AVAs). We developed an R-Markdown script that used these relationships to create a Stewardship Report predict the bee biodiversity at each vineyard based on the plant records submitted by the grower (see attachment for example from Montinore Vineyards). We modified the R-Markdown script from after three annual meetings with the advisory committee and then distributed these to each of the participating growers.
Objective 2: Native bee monitoring
We installed 8-12 cavity nest blocks across six of the vineyards from April-September 2022 and 2023. These nest blocks were stored at 4C for three months to simulate winter conditions and are currently in the process of being incubated at 32C to cause bees to emerge in order to identify the bees to species. There were very few specimens obtained through this technique (less than 25) which resulted in us adopting a different method to assess the bee community, namely hand netting.
Using hand netting we collected 2,626 bee specimens from host plants at 6 vineyards in 2022 and 11 vineyards in 2023, which will enable us to compare the bee community as predicted from our database (Objective 1) to the community as estimated from sampling at each vineyard. The bees have been identified by taxonomist Lincoln Best and we estimate to have 135 total bee species. Seven common species of bee (Bombus vosnesenskii, Ceratina acantha, Halictus ligatus, Apis mellifera, Halictus tripartitus, Melissodes lupinus, and Lasioglossum titusi) comprised 46% of the bees collected (Figure 1) and over 3/4 of the species detected were sampled 10 or fewer times. This survey effort comprises the largest done in commercial vineyards in the Western U.S.
Figure 1. Display of total bee abundance by species across 15 sampled vineyards (only bee species identified more than 7 times are shown on the graph).
We used the bee dataset from each vineyard to test the hypothesis that bee species richness we observed from our bee survey was related to the richness modeled by the Stewardship Tool (Objective 1). To do this we compared either the raw observed richness of bees at each vineyard or the richness adjusted to relative sample effort using Choa 1 estimates as compared to the modeled richness based on the stewardship reports (Figure 2). We report a relatively strong fit between the bees we collected and the bees we modeled would be there based on the 2018-2023 bee-plant interaction data from the Oregon Bee Atlas. This finding validates the use of the vineyard owners being able to predict bee diversity on their property based on them documenting their plant biodiversity using the methods developed in our study.
Figure 2. Fit between observed bee richness based on collection of bees from vineyards in 2022-2023, in terms of raw richness (left) and estimated richness based on sample effort (right), and the modeled richness based on plants observed by vineyard owners on their property and their relationship to a larger bee plant database collected between 2028-2023 by the Oregon Bee Atlas. The blue line indicates the line of best fit and grey bands represents 95% confidence intervals.
Education and Outreach
Participation Summary:
We surveyed the 32 participants in the project around the project and the impacts to their operations in March 2025. We had 15 responses to the following questions distributed via email.
- I have gained knowledge about how to create bee habitat on vineyards through this project
- Over the next 3 years I am likely to use the Stewardship Report to guide investments to improve bee habitat at our vineyard?
- Estimated acres you have enhanced for pollinator habitat from 2023-2025?
- Estimated acres you plan to enhance for pollinator habitat over the next 3 years?
- We plan to use the Stewardship Report in the marketing of our wine as enhancing biodiversity
- Roughly estimate the number of patrons who learned about bee friendly wine at your events or through your promotions
In response to our exit interview we report the following:
1. I have gained knowledge about how to create bee habitat on vineyards through this project
2. Over the next 3 years I am likely to use the Stewardship Report to guide investments to improve bee habitat at our vineyard?
3. Estimated acres you have enhanced for pollinator habitat from 2023-2025? 185.25 acres
4. Estimated acres you plan to enhance for pollinator habitat over the next 3 years? 224.5 acres
5. We plan to use the Stewardship Report in the marketing of our wine as enhancing biodiversity
6. Roughly estimate the number of patrons who learned about bee friendly wine at your events or through your promotions: 237/vineyard - 3,245 total
We hosted three Bee Friendly Wine Growers Advisory Committee meetings (10 January 2023, 4 January 2024, 4 March 2025) with a total of 42 growers. We have held a total of 10 grower focused events since 2023 with training on sustainable management for bee habitat involving 60 different vineyards. These events included two 30 min webinars on how to use the stewardship tool, a poster presentation at 2024 and 2025 LIVE (Low Input Viticulture and Enology) conference, as well as 30-60 min on habitat installation. In addition there were a total 27 site visits to each vineyard in 2022 and 42 visits in 2023. A listserv was also established with 25 separate vineyards to improve communication among vineyard participants.
The project's Bee Friendly Wine Grape website had 4,528 unique views. We organized 20 public facing events across the 2023-2024 Oregon Bee Friendly Wine Tour, which included wine tasting and 15-20 min education in one of four categories: apiculture, mason bee culture, gardening for bees and bee biodiversity. A total of 12 social media posts for a public Bee Friendly Wine Tour has resulted in 1,990 clicks.