Back in 2018 we were fortunate to be invited to place bees up in the Viola and Stone City area. It turned out that a couple of the landowners had developed a beautiful pollinator haven on the site that Grant Wood depicted in Fall Plowing in 1931. Grant Wood is most known for American Gothic, but he produced an extensive body of work here in Iowa. Here are our bees returned to the artistic scene after the California stint:

I didn't honestly know all that much about Grant Wood until I was on the board of directors for The History Center for several years. We rehabilitated the Douglas Mansion that housed Wood's patron, John B. Turner. Grant Wood, on the other hand, lived and painted several of his more famous works in the carriage house hayloft located on the same property. Today that carriage house is owned by the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art and known as The Grant Wood Studio. Here are those two buildings:

The main bee task right now is getting the new hives through queen acceptance and getting the parent hives out to production locations. It adds so much to the bee moving experience to have really cool historical context on great forage ground! We have a lot more bee moving to achieve in the next two weeks.

Right now we're held up due to rain, but the last half of the week should let us distribute more hives to their warm weather homes. Be patient bees!--dandelions and apples have gotten held up due to the sudden cool and wet period, so there will be a lot of blossoms all at once if we just get some warmth and sunshine.