Busy Bee Flea Market

On market Saturdays the booths go up on open ground beside Highway 87 in Roundup, on the parking lot and land where the Busy Bee Cafe stood. On Saturday, October 3, 2026, vendors posted to the market’s Facebook group from their set-ups. “There’s quite a few booths set up at the Busy Bee today,” Susan Goffena wrote. Elizabeth Thibodeau had eggs, soap, and handmade jewelry. Her soaps are made in small batches, and that week’s holiday scents included a Charcoal Mud facial bar, Summer Wildflower, Christmas Cranberry, Honey Peppermint, and Pumpkin Pie. His Glory Homestead brought goat milk soap.

Honey, hatchets, and fishing poles

John Thomas organizes the market with his daughter, Janet. The two use the Facebook group to reach both locals and people from out of town. Thomas also keeps a booth for his beekeeping business, Thomas Honey, which sells local raw honey and creamed honey. “My favorite part is just talking and meeting with the people,” he told KTVQ. “As a beekeeper, people always ask me what’s going on with the bees.”

Jay Nunn had been coming for six years when the station visited. He sells knives, coins, belt buckles, and hatchets. Susan Goffena and her husband, Alan, sell hand-made fishing poles and knives, with plants fresh from their garden. “We’re ranchers and my husband can’t work on the ranch anymore because of his bad back and heart. So, he makes all this stuff,” she said. Asked her favorite part, she answered, “Oh, visiting with everybody!” Nunn’s advice was plainer: “Everybody should stop if they can, ‘cuz it’s got a big variety of stuff here.”

The market is free, and visitors walk in. Thomas has given its season as May to September, but the October 2026 posts show booths still going up after that.

Four vendors at the start

According to Thomas, four vendors showed up when the market began. Ten years later, by KTVQ’s report, 35 came to the first Saturday of the spring season. In July 2024 the Roundup Record Tribune reported that the market was expanding beyond Saturdays. It planned a flea market on the 4th of July, followed by a Tuesday market from 2 to 7 p.m. alongside the Saturday hours of 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.

For most of those years the booths stood outside a working restaurant.

A church building from Ryegate

The Busy Bee Cafe started in 1945 in an old church building from Ryegate. A mural that once decorated the outside of the cafe ended up on a restroom wall. In 2019 the Billings Gazette photographed Mary Ann Petrie showing off the cafe’s original exterior in the ladies restroom. “That mural was done in ‘69,” Mark Petrie said. That was the year he and Mary Ann bought the Busy Bee.

The Petries ran it for 56 years. The building held a bar and casino, a front desk, and a main dining room, along with a 1950s-style diner once filled with Mark’s memorabilia. Among the pieces was a picture of a Roundup resident with Wilt Chamberlain. “You’ve got to enjoy cooking,” Petrie said. “It was all home cooking, roast beef, chicken, whatever, and that’s the type of cooks we had.” The Gazette’s photographs from the cafe’s 50th year under the Petries show the crew at work. Laurie Bo separates eggs in the bakery, and Cindy Kirby reads a meal ticket. Karen Mjelde gathers an order the two of them cooked, and Bobbie Stith loads the dishwasher.

“We were coming down here after church on Sunday,” said Ron Polich. “This is like an old hometown.” Adele Bissonette remembered the holidays: “Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, they always had special Valentines with the balloons and the roses.” Governor Greg Gianforte and his wife stopped in, and former governor Steve Bullock had also been to the Busy Bee. Aaron Flint of Montana Talks recalled the drive from Glasgow to Billings as a boy in the 1980s. “You had to stop at the Busy Bee,” he wrote, and even without stopping, the sight of it meant the long trip was almost over. The cafe’s sign was a horse marquee. “Little kids, they don’t remember Busy Bee They remember the horse,” Mark Petrie said.

Eight feet of water and a $55,000 bid

The Busy Bee sat in the Musselshell River floodplain. On May 26, 2011, a Gazette aerial photograph showed the cafe standing in the floodwater. Parts of the building and whole sections of town went under 8 feet of water, and the marks were still visible nearly eight years later. Because of the floodplain, the cafe closed by April 2025, and the Petries said FEMA had told them the building would have to come down.

Thomas said Musselshell County bought the property, and the county minutes record the demolition. Commissioner Pancratz opened the demolition bids on September 26, 2025. The county’s emergency services office received the keys a week later. On October 10, 2025, it accepted a $55,000 bid from Solan Contracting of Molt. The Petries had said the horse and marquee would stay on the site. On October 24, 2025, the county reported that the horse and sign had been removed and put in storage. In March 2026 crews took out the air-conditioning.

On March 27, 2026, Thomas went before the commissioners and asked whether the Saturday Flea Market could still be held at the Busy Bee. They told him it could, and that demolition should start the next week. On April 24, 2026, the county reported the Busy Bee demolition project successfully completed.

What follows on the land is reported in different ways. The Petries said the county commissioners will turn it into a park. A caller to Montana Talks said the city was looking to build one. Thomas, in 2025, said, “They’re going to tear down the building, and then rehab the whole area here into a community park, is what we’re being told.” He allowed then that the market might have to find a new home. “As long as we’re having fun,” he said, “we’ll keep going at it.”