GASTONIA, N.C. — Charlotte and Gastonia are both part of one artist's global mission to raise awareness of the importance of honey bees through art.
Matt Willey is an artist and the founder of The Good of the Hive. While the project has had him traveling across the country and beyond, it started in an apartment in New York in 2008.
The bee-ginning
Willey said a honey bee flew into his studio, and was crawling slowly on the floor. He felt compelled, and spent time hanging out with the bee until she died later that day.
"I connected with her in a way I had never connected with an insect before," Willey said. "I saw the cuteness, the fuzziness, the big antenna, the eyes, it was just an emotional connection. And I did hear this voice that said, this is just about change, another form of change."
After that, he started researching honey bees and learned about altruistic self-removal, in which a sick bee leaves its hive for the good of the hive. He described that discovery as a "lightning bolt moment," and it later inspired the name of his project.
"I recognized suddenly that we are all more connected than we know," Willey said.
He said he had been painting murals for 20 years at that point, and felt pulled to paint bees.
"The bee had become really big in my mind," he said. "So I thought I could put them on walls really big or a wall really big, and put them in other people's minds. Simple, except nobody really wanted one and nobody came to me."
Years later, a friend shared a video of a longtime honey company in LaBelle, Florida. The owner was interested, but not only could they not afford it -- the law wouldn't allow any murals within the city. Willey told her if she could get the law changed, he'd figure out how to pay for the mural. Within a few months, he said the law was being changed and he was making plans to go to Florida.
While working on that mural, someone asked him if he knew how many bees were in a healthy hive. He had just learned from the company's owner that a healthy hive has 30,000 to 60,000 bees.
"He just looked at me and said, 'Do you think you could paint 50,000 bees?'" Willey recalled. "There [were] literally 16 bees in the mural behind me that we were talking about. But it was this second lightning bolt moment of, I'm going to see if I can do it."
Roughly nine years later, he's painted over 10,200 bees in 53 murals, several of which are in the Carolinas -- fitting, as the honey bee is the state insect of North Carolina.
Charlotte-area murals
Gastonia's mural came relatively early in The Good of the Hive project, in 2017.
"Gastonia is actually one of the pieces that's closest to my heart because I found one of my greatest champions and friends on that project, Merryman Cassels," he said.
Cassels, a professional astrologer who used to run Hive Design and Porcelain in downtown Gastonia, met Willey at a gathering of beekeepers in Hot Springs, North Carolina. A beekeeper of over 20 years, she thought Willey's mission was a perfect fit for the storefront.
"It also felt like a real profound gift to Gaston County, though, you know, I didn't know how long I would have the shop or be there," Cassels said. "I knew that mural would be there. And I knew it would be something special."
Cassels no longer lives in Gastonia, but looks back fondly at the time Willey spent engaging with the community and painting the bees on the storefront. She related his approach to engaging with the community to how bees prioritize the hive.
"Being present as he's painting the mural, sharing the stories -- sharing the stories not only of the bees, but of each other," Cassels said. "When you know someone you see somebody else's heart, you can't help but fall in love with them. And I think Matt falls in love with every person he encounters."
Gastonia is considered an affiliate of Bee City USA, a national initiative founded in Asheville that aims to bring communities together in the effort to save bee populations. Gastonia became a Bee City in 2018 -- only the 74th city to be affiliated. As part of this, Juliann Lehman with Keep Gastonia Beautiful said the city celebrates bees each year at its Beetopia education and celebration event.
Willey's mural was a natural fit with the city's efforts to celebrate pollinators, Lehman said.
"It was one of the first murals pretty much in our downtown area in general, and I think that's going to help spark things down in the future," Lehman said. "To have a nationally known person to come to Gastonia and to choose us is that's such an honor."
Lehman noted there is a purple metal bee "planted" among the flowers in front of the building with Willey's mural. The sculpture contains a QR code to help anyone who sees the mural learn more about Gastonia's Bee City efforts.
"We wouldn't have a farmer's market -- we wouldn't have anything without bees," Lehman said. "So we need to celebrate them. We need to protect them, and do what we can by planting native species in our city and in neighborhoods as well."
In 2019, Willey returned to the Charlotte area, painting a mural on the side of Flower Child in South End just off the light rail. Charlotte is a Bee City as well, affiliated since 2023.
"I really enjoyed Charlotte," Willey recalled. "I hadn't spent any time there. And I just loved -- now that was another one where they just let me go for it, you know, and like, just paint."
What comes next
Since Willey paints every single mural by hand with brushes instead of spray paint, he anticipates he'll be painting bees across the world for many more years to come.
"The idea is to go into every type of community in the world where bees exist," Willey said. "They are a unifying thing, because they're -- our food systems, our soil, our you know, those very basic things are tied to pollinators. And so it's an equalizer."
Aug. 17 marks World Honey Bee Day, and right in time, the Gastonia Baseball Club is starting its stint as the Gastonia Zombees. For those going out to root on the Zombees, Willey's Gastonia mural can be found near the intersection of West Main Avenue and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Way.
Contact Emma Korynta at ekorynta@wcnc.com and follow her on Instagram and X .