A Sweet and Sticky Way With Nature

Joel klose of Nature's Way Honey tells his story at the Morningside Park Farmers Market

As a child Joel Klose spent summers on an Indian Reservation with his Grandmother, a Seneca named Maria Shermerhorn. One early summer morning, when he was 4-years-old, Klose remembers his grandmother waking him and his older sister before the sun came up. She loaded them into her 1960 Pontiac Bonaville, started the engine and drove into the darkness. When the car stopped, Klose recognized his surroundings in the glow of the headlights; they were at Beaver Pond, where he often played during the day. The engine went silent, the headlights flicked off and as Maria Shermerhorn rolled down her window they were engulfed by a deafeningly beautiful song. The three sat in silence surrounded by the tree frogs’ swelling sound.

As he speaks about the “harmonic hum” of his beehives, it’s clear that that summer morning with his grandmother never entirely leaves his mind. “It’s the sound of the universe,” he says. “It’s like the wind and the trees and the rain.” Klose is taking an early afternoon break at the farmers market while his son Brian sells their honey and bee products. “I am so proud of him,” he says of Brian, the youngest of his 5 children. “He has such a good rapport with customers.”

Klose has woven his livelihood into the fabric of his everyday life so well that as he describes his business, his family inevitably comes up. There’s Jesse, the drummer; Heather, who’s in the air force (she was the one to start her family off selling at farmers markets); Rebecca, the socialite who is a cook in Florida; Anna the fiery read head; Brian, who has taken to bee-keeping since he was 8 years old and his wife Shirley, better known as Peony, who is responsible for making the beeswax candles. “In the kitchen, she’s a mad scientist,” Klose says. “She comes up with all the recipes.

Since the 1980’s Klose and Peony have grown almost all of their food on their small farm. The Bees came onto the scene 17 years ago, when they decided to increase their harvest. Now, through intensive hive management and breeding programs, the family’s bee business has become one of the survivors in a struggling industry, but not without a lot of hard work and dedication. As Klose says, “We’re bee keepers but the bees actually run our schedule.”

Considering the prolific floral varieties in the Finger Lakes region and the Klose’s undying efforts to isolate nectar collection during different honey flows, this makes sense. By keeping his bees in different areas (fields, forest, orchards etc.), knowing what is in bloom and marking his honey supers with a lumber pencil, Klose has cultivated a number of different honey varietals like: buckwheat, wildflower, basswood, orchard blossom and his personal favorite, forest flower- a fall-time red-colored honey, that is rich and savory (mild enough for tea but great in bread and yogurt).  

“It’s like a chess game to keep track of bees,” Klose says. But he admits that beekeeping requires more than strategy and a lumber pencil to mark hives with; one must enter into a certain rhythm with nature. “It’s almost a Zen thing I have going on with the bees,” he says. “There is a rhythm and sound in nature that is in the sound of the bees. It’s like what my Seneca Grandmother would call ‘entering into the silence.’”  According to Klose everyone possesses that rhythm, “That’s one of the reason’s people love farmers markets so much,” he says.  

Since he started bee-keeping Klose has discovered the healing properties of honey. He no longer takes allergy medication because a teaspoon of honey does the trick.  “All the over-the counter stuff used to make me crazy,” he says.  According to the American Association of Family Physicians, the idea is that eating honey gradually vaccinates the body against allergens, a process called immunotherapy.  Because honey contains a variety of the same pollen spores that give allergy sufferers trouble, introducing these spores into the body in small amounts by eating honey should make the body accustomed to their presence and decrease the chance an immune system response like the release of histamine will occur.

Studies show that honey is also good for cholesterol and gets rid of athletes foot and bee pollen is a great energy enhancer!

Natures Way Honey can be purchased at the Morningside Park Farmers Market on 110th street and Manhattan Ave. every Saturday from 9am-5pm

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