Who We Are, What We Do

Bee Regenerative’s mission is to inspire and advance bee conservation on agricultural landscapes.

Bee Regenerative is dedicated to preserving biodiversity, promoting coexistence, partnering in private land stewardship, and inspiring regenerative stewardship of agricultural lands to stabilize our climate and our food system. Despite the crucial role that bees play in our everyday lives, their populations are declining at alarming rates due to “The Four P’s” - pesticides, pests, poor nutrition, and pathogens. This decline undoubtedly threatens life as we know it.

Bee Regenerative, through partnership with ranchers, viticulturalists, research colleagues, and community stakeholders, aims to address these critical issues. We strive to re-diversify agricultural landscapes, mitigate harmful pesticide usage, and enhance soil health.  Achieving our mission requires deeply comprehensive and collaborative efforts.

The current agricultural practices often prioritize short-term yields over long-term ecological health, leading to monocultures, chemical dependencies, and habitat loss of bees and other fauna. These practices exacerbate the challenges bees face, diminishing their ability to fulfill their vital pollination roles. Without immediate and sustained intervention, the decline in bee populations will continue, jeopardizing the resilience of our ecosystems and the stability of our food supply.

To build a future where bees enrich our working landscapes and lives, it is imperative to adopt and promote regenerative agricultural practices that support biodiversity and coexistence. Bee Regenerative is committed to leading this charge in partnership with our stakeholders, but we need the support of like-minded individuals, communities, and organizations to amplify our impact and drive meaningful change.

Our Values 

Conservation: We practice a mindset that natural resources are finite and must be treated as such.  Advocating for the proper management of natural resources on working lands to ensure life giving nutrition and shelter for bees today and two hundred years into the future is one aspect of a conservation mindset.  Another is ensuring our day-to-day business is conducted in a way that supports the conservation of our natural resources through minimizing consumption and waste of soil, water, forests, fossil fuels, food, and fiber.

Regeneration: We uplift and support producers who use agricultural practices to improve the landscape instead of degrading it.  A working landscape undergoing regeneration boasts a diversity of multiple species of insects, plants, and mammals, has water infiltration and holding capacity, and cycles and stores carbon.  We also highly value the regeneration of human hearts, minds, and communities by advocating for more heartbeats per acre in our working lands.    

Complexity: We recognize the complexity of nature.  We embrace the fact that sometimes we can’t make sense of what happens in the landscapes we work on.  We accept that not all problems are the same, and not all solutions are the same.  Though nature is resilient, and recovery and regeneration is possible, ecological scales may not always be linear and may take years or decades.  We choose delight, not frustration, when presented with the opportunity to learn from (and educate with) the lessons presented by natural complexity.        

Resilience: We acknowledge and accept the multitude of adverse conditions that arise by the nature of working for a not for profit organization and working on agricultural and natural landscapes that are in constant flux, made more dramatic by the effects of climate change.  We are committed to maintaining flexibility in the administration of our programs and patience and grace in our human relationships. We emphasize a positive culture and support the mental health of our team and those we work with.  Despite mounting challenges, we seek delight in our work – every day.  Observing a honey bee return to the hive, a swollen golden globe, nearly transparent in the glinting, setting sun.  Vibrating with the hum of a meadow, as the flowers are protected from grazing until the bees have had their fill of nectar and pollen.  Watching the gleeful face of a child when you tell them honey bees must collect nectar from two million blossoms to make one pound of honey.  Feeling the thump of a low bison rumble as a summer long-horned bee dozes off in a small, native sunflower.  These are our delights, creating resilience.    

Affection: Our connections with the individuals we work in collaboration with (to build bee habitats, raise funds, organize events, etc.) must be based on genuine authenticity and a mutual admiration for each other’s vision for how we want to heal our relationship with the earth.  Our human relationships deepen and thrive when infused with trust, humor, and generosity.  We also hold a deep love and reverence for our bees, and all they do.  Feeding people through pollination and facilitating biodiversity above and below the soil through playing the key role in plant reproduction.  Bees bring color, flavor, and taste onto our landscapes and into our lives.  

Our Worker Bees

Sarah Red-Laird

Founder and Executive Director

Sarah Red-Laird is the founder and Executive Program Director of Bee Regenerative and the Bee Girl organization (BGO), a grassroots nonprofit centered on bee habit conservation through research, regeneration, & education.  Her work currently has her chasing bees from the Coast Mountains of Oregon, though the Great Basin, to Montana’s Paradise Valley, and into the Great Plains.  She is a graduate of the University of Montana's College of Forestry and Conservation and the Davidson Honors College with a degree in Resource Conservation, focused on community collaboration and environmental policy.  To see her commitment to good policy and education realized, she has formerly served as the director of the American Beekeeping Federation’s “Kids and Bees” program, as president of the Northwest Farmers Union and Western Apicultural Society, and as a board member of the National Farmers Union.  When she is not working alongside bees, beekeepers, kids, farmers, ranchers, vineyard managers, and policy makers, Sarah loves to read books while drinking coffee, ride her vintage 10-speed, run in the hills, and see new places, things, and people.  To see her latest projects updates visit Instagram and Facebook @sarahbeegirl

Our Support Staff