Rob and Angie Bell
Our story
Beekeepers first. Shopkeepers because people kept asking to take the honey home. The motto on the wall is from Jeremiah 6:16: “Standing in the old ways, for they are the good ways.”
A hive for Christmas
It started in 2013. Rob didn't have a hobby that was his, so Angie gave him bees for Christmas. He loved them. Beekeeping changed how they mow, what they plant, and how they spend a Saturday. Rob works the hives, builds boxes, and renders wax. Angie turns that honey and wax into food and balms.
The farm is in the Welcome community. The garlic, peppers, and mint in the flavored honeys are grown there from heirloom seed. They wanted to know what was in the jar.
From a booth to a store
In 2018 they set up a small booth near the checkout at Evenbrooke Marketplace: honey, beeswax goods, and a few bee-themed gifts. Angie was already known for the chocolate-covered peanut-butter eggs she made as a church fundraiser. The booth got tight. They moved into the old Table and Root space and opened HoneyBell's Old Country Store, with months of work in the facade, the shelves, and an 1880s fudge case.
Angie grew up walking to a country store on Arrington Drive for candy. The bushel baskets, the ice cream counter, and the general-store sign are that memory, built for everybody else's kids too. She has said this is the work they want to grow old doing — a place customers can bring their children to for years.
And then a table to sit at
The store kept adding: Homestead Creamery milk, local meat and cheese, fudge, ice cream, herbs. By 2026 there was still nowhere in the marketplace to sit down for lunch. The Hive Eatery, opened in October 2026, is that room — sandwiches, salads, soup, and tea, a few steps from the candy baskets.