HONEY & THE HIVE
Weaverville, NC
The Awe of the Bee
The Good of the Hive mural at Honey & the Hive in Weaverville, North Carolina (now closed, but the mural remains) holds a particularly tender place in Matt Willey’s journey — and carries with it a story of both joy and grief. The shop, originally known as Wild Mountain Bee Supply, is a woman-owned beekeeping supply and honey store that sources all of its local wildflower honey from within 100 miles of Weaverville, and the mural was painted on the exterior of the building in 2016.
The Process
The project came together through an act of mutual generosity: the shop had reached out to Willey early on saying they would love to be part of the project whenever he had time, and when a larger planned mural was unexpectedly postponed at the last minute — leaving six weeks of work suddenly gone — he called them, and they responded with the speed and collective energy of a hive itself.
The experience became one of the warmest of his career, filled with movie nights in the grass and evenings of art and music inside the store, leaving Willey feeling more appreciated and cared for than on almost any other project.
In Memory of Sarah
But the mural’s story took on a sorrowful dimension in the years that followed. Sarah McKinney, the founder of Honey & the Hive and the driving champion of the mural project, later died in a car crash — a loss Willey described with deep feeling, remembering her as someone who gave him confidence, taught countless people about bees and beekeeping, and was, in every sense, beyond something special.
The bees on that wall in Weaverville now carry her memory too.
