In 2010, Aron and Jessica Wehr, along with their daughters Anna and Abby, landed in Robbinsville, North Carolina, expecting it to be a brief stop on their journey. The pace of life, the tight-knit community, and the wild beauty of Graham County quickly worked their way into the family’s hearts and turned that stop into home. Not long after, Aron gave Jessica a pair of honeybee hives for Christmas, a thoughtful gift that would quietly reshape their lives.

​

Those first two hives sparked a deep fascination. As the colonies thrived, two hives became twenty, then one hundred, then hundreds scattered across the Appalachian hillsides. What began as a backyard hobby soon overflowed their kitchen shelves, and the Wehrs started selling jars of raw, lightly filtered honey at local farmers markets and festivals. In 2013, they officially founded Wehrloom Honey, committing to build a small family business that could both support their family and celebrate the bees they had come to love.

​

From the beginning, Aron and Jessica have focused on keeping their bees as close to their natural state as possible, placing hives on land that is largely national forest so the bees forage on wild Appalachian nectar sources. That care for the bees—prioritizing their health and natural behavior—sits at the heart of Wehrloom and shapes every jar of honey, every candle, and every batch of mead they produce. For Aron and Jessica, the business is about more than products on a shelf; it is about doing something worthwhile for the land, the pollinators, and the people who pass through their doors.

​

As their honey harvests grew, so did their creativity. Using beeswax from the hives, they began crafting candles and developing Jessica’s line of skincare products, items originally made for their own family that customers quickly embraced. Eventually, they took another step in their journey with the bees: turning honey into mead and building a taproom that could introduce people to honey-based beverages in a warm, welcoming space. Today, Wehrloom Honey & Meadery includes two brick-and-mortar stores in Robbinsville and Bryson City, with hives across Graham County and a growing presence beyond their home mountains.

​

Aron and Jessica have also helped shape how agriculture fits into their rural community, showing what’s possible when you build a business that is rooted in place and purpose. Over time, Wehrloom has grown from a family project into a small, dedicated team of craftspeople who harvest, pour, and package every product by hand, always with their neighbors and visitors in mind. From tending hives in the hills to labeling jars at the shop, each person at Wehrloom plays a part in bringing honest, thoughtfully made goods to the community they love.