Asheville's Honeyfest Finds a New Home and a Sweet Cause

By Jon Tharp, Broker  ·  June 17, 2026

Asheville turned out for its smallest and most important neighbors at this year's Honeyfest, a celebration of honeybees and the people who keep them. The festival drew a crowd to Highland Brewing for an afternoon of local honey, food, and music built around a serious message: pollinators matter, and they need our help.

The event is more than a feel-good summer gathering. It is organized by the Center for Honeybee Research, and the bee conservation message sits at the center of the day. Honeybees and other pollinators are responsible for a huge share of the food we eat, and their populations have been under pressure for years.

This year carried an extra layer of meaning. Honeyfest had to find a new home after Hurricane Helene destroyed Salvage Station, its longtime venue along the river. The move to Highland Brewing kept the tradition alive, and the strong turnout showed that the community was not going to let the storm take this one too.

Ashley Lieb of Honey Creek Pottery, one of the vendors, summed up the bittersweet feeling. "It was really sad that we lost Salvage Station in Helene, but Highland is a great space," she said.

The day had everything you would want from a mountain festival. Local honey producers sold their jars and talked shop, vendors and food trucks lined the grounds, and the band Queen Bee and the Honey Lovers provided a fittingly named soundtrack. Families wandered through, sampling honey and learning about the insects behind it.

Underneath the fun, the recovery angle was real. Helene did not just damage buildings and roads, it also took a toll on the region's beehives, and the Center for Honeybee Research has been working to support the recovery of local bee populations. A festival like this helps fund and publicize that work while reminding people how much depends on a healthy pollinator population.

That connection between the land and the people who tend it runs deep in Western North Carolina. The same farms and gardens that draw people to these mountains rely on bees, and many residents here keep hives of their own. Honeyfest is a reminder that supporting pollinators is not an abstract cause in this region, it is local and personal.

For anyone who loves the idea of mountain living, days like this are part of the appeal. A community that throws a festival for its bees, and rallies to keep that festival going after a disaster, is the kind of place people put down roots. Highland Brewing proved a fitting new home, and odds are good the bees will be back next June.