Humans Behind the Honey Bees

from Family Magazine Spring Edition

by North Central Florida Advertiser

Cinco de Mayo Recipes

Humans Behind the Honey THOMAS HONEY

By Hayli Zuccola Holly Frazier Photography

David Blanks, Morgan and Mason Maxwell inspect the frames of one of the supers of their busy bees.

MEANT TO BEE

From an early age, Mike Thomas was enamored with the life and habits of bees. Born and raised in Jacksonville, Mike was the only boy in the neighborhood with an unfading curiosity and, because of that, he eagerly off ered to help his aunt tend to her backyard hives. During this time, his intrigue for these buzzing insects never lapsed and, when he got older, he procured his own hive from his aunt. Mike spent the following years multiplying his colonies and later formed a partnership with two other hobbyist beekeepers to care for what fl ourished into around 600 hives.

Of course, what initially began as a leisurely activity quickly became a passion and, in 1967, Mike decided to make two major life changes involving a move from the city life to the countryside and a shift in careers. With his wife, Kitsy, by his side, Mike eventually bought out the partnership he helped forge and purchased a small apiary on the outskirts of Lake City to turn this long-held interest in honeybees into a full-fl edged business venture.

Apart from a stable curiosity, to be a successful beekeeper, one must have patience and a calm demeanor—traits that helped Mike grow his hive count to 1,600 thriving colonies. Operating now as a commercial business, Mike became a member of the Sue Bee co-op, which bought the honey his bees produced in bulk. To expand his honey profi le and fl avor varieties, Mike managed to obtain contracts and organized road trips for his bees to set up hives in orange groves further south, clover fi elds in North Dakota or kept them local to make wildfl ower and gallberry blends.

At the time, the Sioux Honey Association was more lenient toward their fellow beekeepers, so Mike was able to keep any leftover honey that wasn’t already promised to Sue Bee, and in the ’80s, he gradually began bottling this liquid gold under the Thomas name—eventually opting to let his co-op membership expire.

LIFE IN THE HONEY HOUSE

Though Mike may have started this sticky endeavor, Thomas Honey has always been a family business. Mike and Kitsy’s oldest son, Rocky, inherited his father’s love for bees and hive-harboring and still has his own collection of hives today. Their daughter Kathie helped run the business in the late ’90s and was infl uential in expanding the retail part of the business whether it was selling jars of honey for restaurants to use in culinary creations or to businesses looking for something sweet to put on their shelves. Their son Jeff isn’t formally involved in the business, but his wife, Marcie, often helps during honey-selling appearances at folk festivals and other events. Their daughter Kelly is the brains and fl avor-creator behind the “Kae’s” line of specialty blend products like cinnamon creamed honey, real deal jerk honey and hot tamale honey. Their youngest daughter, Kristi, is more hands-off in terms of day-to-day operations as she currently lives in St. Augustine, but still manages to off er new ideas whenever she can.

While all fi ve of their children played a role in the business’s continued success, many of Mike and Kitsy’s grandchildren have also left a mark on the Thomas Honey legacy. Rocky’s oldest daughter, Emily, was integral in redoing the Thomas Honey website and maintaining and writing the business’s blog. Kathie’s daughter, Kaycee, married a fellow beekeeper and the duo is part of a co-op in North Dakota—their two children also gravitating toward life in the bee business. Jeff ’s oldest son, Justin, is a painter by trade, but is always available and ready to fi ll in on retail deliveries. Kelly’s daughter Kayla creates recipes featuring Thomas’s acclaimed honey, and her son, Mitchell, works with the bees in his spare time and off ers a hand during festival appearances. Of course, it was Kelly’s oldest daughter Kortney that decided to take on a larger role by overhauling and rebranding the retail side of the buzz-worthy business. “I grew up, you know, you walk out of the front door and the fi rst thing you see is the honey house, so it was pretty integral to me growing up, and I remember being young like probably middle to late elementary school and I would always ask grandpa like ‘What can I do? Where can I work? I want to earn some money,’” Kortney Stewart recalled. “I think I was probably 7 and I would nail brads into frames all day, and then whenever I got old enough to work in the extracting room in the summer, they would bring all of the honey back from North Dakota…the extracting room was pretty labor-intensive and in present-day times it probably wouldn’t work the same way because there’s like heavy machinery and stuff , but when I was young I would work in the extracting room in the summer…you’d be really proud whenever you got strong enough to lift a 40-pound box of honey; it was like a milestone,” she said.

^ Kortney Stewart stands beside her grandfather Mike Thomas who started the Thomas Honey legacy. Surounding them are stacks of honeybee homes called supers. The supers are lled with frames and combs, which the bees use to store and then seal their honey.

These fond memories of working in what they referred to as the “Honey House,” inspired Kortney to follow in her grandfather’s footsteps and leave her high-pressure environment of a career and take over the retail portion of the family business, which Mike was already considering retiring from. Growing up surrounded by these fl uttering insects, Kortney knew the artistry that went into beekeeping, but her interest laid in what happened after the bees made their golden syrup. For the retail side of the business, Kortney buys honey—either from her Uncle Rocky or from one of three to four other trusted beekeepers—that’s already been extracted into 55-gallon drums. When ready to bottle, the drums are hand-dipped into a tank that slowly warms the contents of the drum to around 100-to-110 degrees before the honey can be strained to remove any wood chips or fallen bees. The cooled honey is then dispensed into each glass jar and embellished with the Thomas Honey black and gold label. “Everything is dipped and bottled and labeled by hand,” Kortney said. Apart from the four original fl avors of honey: gallberry, wildfl ower, orange blossom and clover, with the recipe expertise of her mom, Kelly, and the help and advice from other family members and employees, Kortney has been able to expand the retail side of the business to include several specialty blends like the popular creamed honey, beeswax bars and honey straws with aspirations of selling lotion and lip balms in the near future. “Something that I am very, very proud of is having a business that is fun to work at, you know, like creating something that whether it’s ultimately about the honey—I mean I love honey and could talk about honey and bees forever like it’s just such an intricate thing to be involved in—but I think that there’s also bigger meaning—deeper meaning—for me in being able to say, you know, I have created something that makes the world a better place…maybe the scope is more narrow because I have four employees versus a new set of clients every three months, but the depth of that impact is really special to me and the fact that I can also be much more connected with my family: the impact of having a strong family whether they’re heavily involved or just marginally so, I mean that’s really meaningful to me as well,” she said. Kortney took a leap of faith in 2020 in deciding to take over the retail side of the Thomas Honey enterprise, but it was a decision that, so far, has proved to be a sweet one that will help continue

the association between the Thomas family name and delicious honey. “This started from the ground up but, you know, we’re 60 years in at this point and just how much the business has diversifi ed to include so much of our family…I just think it’s really cool because you don’t see families who can make that work often,” Kortney said.

A SWEET LEGACY

Forever remembered as the pillar of the Thomas Honey Company and the one who started it all from a single hive from his aunt, Mike Thomas passed away earlier this year just two days shy of his 84th birthday. Fortunately, through years of dedication and unwavering love for his bees, friends and family, Mike created a legacy that will continue to bring a little sweetness to everyone that tastes a spoonful of Thomas Honey. “There’s a great deal of satisfaction to see the business be successful. I certainly—there’s no way around it—I’m proud of the fact that I built a business that’s sustainable and is doing well,” Mike said. ■