1. Bitner Vineyards detail
2. Bees of the Treasure Valley survey detail

CALDWELL, Idaho — Ron Bitner believes bees and vineyards make a good combination.

The bee scientist and Bitner Vineyards owner is one of the leaders of a multi-year survey of Treasure Valley native bees that involves the College of Idaho’s bee laboratory and other partners.

“Bees are my passion, and I love grapes,” Bitner said. “I’ve been fortunate to put them both together.”

An Idaho wine industry pioneer and pollinator advocate, Bitner has spent the last 40-plus years trying to figure out how to best care for agricultural resources — and how to get other people involved.

‘A synthesizer’

He considers himself a “synthesizer” rather than an innovator, he said.

“I read a lot, understand science and see what’s going to work for me — so I’m not necessarily making an innovation,” Bitner said. “We get some ideas, see what’s lacking in Idaho and see what would work.”

“My goal is to understand as much as I can,” he said.

Bitner, a former C of I football player, has a knack for team building.

“He’s innovative in the sense that he’s bringing together different researchers that do not typically work together,” said David Wilkins, a retired Boise State University associate professor of geosciences.

Designing and installing a network of vineyard-sited weather stations — one of which is at Bitner Vineyards — is an example, said Wilkins, the project’s principal investigator. Bitner helped to bring together the team, which included several colleges’ researchers and students. Their specialties ranged from geosciences and soils to electrical engineering.

Broad cooperation was “kind of what made that mesh,” Wilkins said.

The network was started in 2015 in the Sunnyslope wine region, in the hills above the Snake River between Caldwell and Marsing. An expansion brought in the Eagle Foothills to the north and east and the Lewis-Clark Valley in the state’s north-central region.

Essie Fallahi, a retired University of Idaho pomology and viticulture professor, has known Bitner for decades.

They worked together on a research team that figured out which plants could be introduced, and where, to serve as hosts for truffles. The southwest Idaho project, which had success, included input from people in other states.

Bitner “has been a great scientific bridge between academia and application at the grower’s level,” Fallahi said.

“I would call Ron an agricultural ecologist,” said Brad Stokes, a Caldwell-based UI horticulture and entomology extension educator involved in the bee survey. Bitner is “on the forefront of innovation and sustainability in southwest Idaho” — important “so we can keep farming and keep taking care of our lands for future generations.”

Wine pioneer

A grape grower since 1981 in the Sunnyslope area, Bitner was part of an early core group that saw strong potential for the Idaho wine industry.

He was a key member of a team that in 2007 secured American Viticultural Area designation for the Snake River Valley of Idaho and Oregon.

“Ron has been a great leader and advocate for the Idaho wine industry,” Idaho Wine Commission Executive Director Moya Shatz Dolsby said. “We are lucky to have him in Idaho. He has consistently been at the forefront of efforts to enhance the wine industry and agricultural practices.”

Keeping his own vineyard and winery relatively small — Bitner Vineyards typically limits annual production to fewer than 1,500 12-bottle cases — has allowed Bitner to treat the property as a kind of best-practices laboratory as he cares for the site and his longtime staff.

“When we drive near his winery, we see plants not very common to the area,” Fallahi said. Hazelnuts for the truffle project and an array of flowering, pollinator-attracting plants are examples.

Bitner got involved in state and national wine-industry leadership and continued to do bee research — traveling to Australia 25 times between 1995 and 2006 to do work associated with the Alfalfa Leafcutting Bee, for example.

“That little bee has taken me all over the world,” he said.

As for growing wine grapes, “Ron was talking to us about sustainability and soil health before they became part of the popular conscience in the ag industry in general,” said Martin Fujishin, a neighboring vineyard and winery operator to whom Bitner gave a book on cover cropping more than 20 years ago.

“He has really — quietly — helped keep Idaho on the forefront of a lot,” Fujishin said. “He’s not going to give himself credit.”

“I feel like what I have is that historical background on a lot of this,” Bitner said.

As a board member of the national Pollinator Partnership nonprofit since 2019, he has helped build the group’s Bee Friendly Farming certification program from about 800 acres soon after its formation to more than 360,000 worldwide now, including Bitner Vineyards. A gardening certification program followed.

At Bitner Vineyards, “building up the soil” is a priority, Bitner said.

He sought help from Jim Zamzow, for years the face of a family-owned chain of lawn and garden stores. Zamzow developed a series of “biologically correct” fertilizers, one of which is in use at Bitner Vineyards after some experimentation.

Zamzow showed Bitner a “compost-tea” approach that eventually optimized the fertilizer’s impacts in the sandy soil.

Bitner sought benefits several years out, whereas “the average conventional farmer would like to see all the bells and whistles in one year,” Zamzow said. “It’s 50 miles into the woods and another 50 back out.”

Bitner, whose his father worked as an agricultural mechanic, took naturally to experimenting.

“I love that part of it,” he said.

Lanae Ridge Vineyards owner Jay Hawkins is among the neighbors who have hosted some of Bitner’s pollinator work. Eventually, Hawkins plans to incorporate some soil-health practices that Bitner adopted.

Bitner is innovative in that, “it’s stuff a lot of other people are not working on,” Hawkins said.

At McIntyre Pastures this year, farmer Brad McIntyre and Bitner plan to determine cover crop mixes that best attract and nourish native pollinators.

Depending on their findings, more of certain types of seeds could be produced and planted locally, McIntyre said. Bitner will study pollinator-plant interactions, key in that “just because you put a flowering plant out doesn’t mean it’s going to benefit all pollinators.”

708 species

The Treasure Valley bee survey, underway for about three years, so far has identified 708 species, Bitner said. Most nest in the ground.

“We always thought in Idaho there were 300 to 400,” he said.

Greater-than-expected diversity bodes well for insect-pollinated crops, but development of homes and other non-farm uses does not, as excavation disrupts the 10-12 inches of soil in which many of these bees live, Bitner said.

“We know we are going to lose ag lands,” he said. “We can’t afford to lose the biodiversity of our lands and of our crops.”

The bee survey, which has received USDA Specialty Crop Block Grant funding, involves C of I, UI and Oregon State University, plus entomologist and Caldwell middle school science teacher Amy Dolan.

Bitner and colleagues aim to expand the survey geographically and assess the pollinators’ economic impact.

“I just want to connect with other bees out there and get other scientists involved,” he said.

Over time, farming “gets harder,” Bitner said. “I know I can work with bees forever.”

Titles: Owner and vineyard manager, Bitner Vineyards (Owns about 15 acres and manages another 35.) Board member, Pollinator Partnership. Past president, National Wine Grape Growers Association.

Age: 77

Hometown: Midvale, Idaho. Residence: Caldwell, Idaho

Family: Wife, Mary, four daughters. At Bitner Vineyards, Mary handles bookkeeping and daughter Amy Bitner leads sales and marketing.

Education: B.S., biology, The College of Idaho; M.S., entomology, Purdue University; Ph.D., Utah State University — dissertation focused on ecological management of the Alfalfa Leafcutting Bee.

Hobbies: Family, grandchildren, travel, studying and photographing bees.

Selected experience: Bitner Vineyards owner-operator, 1981-present; University of Idaho integrated pest management specialist, 1976-82; partner and consultant, International Pollination Systems, 1990-2006; pollination and integrated pest management consultant, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (Australia), 1995-2006.

Selected awards and grants: Salmon Safe “Hero of Salmon” conservation award, 2021; Idaho Wine Commission Lifetime Achievement Award, 2020; Idaho State Department of Agriculture-administered specialty crop grant project, “Collect and Identify Pollinators that Enhance Idaho Specialty Crops” — $86,709 in 2020 and $67,000 extension in 2023 — Pollinator Partnership Bee Friendly Farming certification of Bitner Vineyards, 2018; Governors Award for Excellence in Agriculture (technical innovation), 2016; Low Input Viticulture and Enology certification of Bitner Vineyards, 2014; Canyon County Farm Family of the Year, Caldwell-Nampa Chamber of Commerce Agribusiness Committee, 2013; John V. Osmun Alumni Professional Achievement Award in Entomology, Purdue, 2011. C of I President’s Medallion (2005) and Alumni Service (2003) awards; Pioneer Hi-Bred International Owen J. Newlin Business Excellence Award as member of Australia alfalfa improvement team, 2022.