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Natural Awakenings South Jersey

Business Spotlight: Mill Creek Apiary

Hats off to New Jersey farmers that are known to grow the most delicious and sweet produce in the country. However, it’s the Garden State’s tiniest heroes—the local honeybees—that play the most critical role in our agriculture and food production as industrious pollinators.

Just ask Jason Shoff, owner and operator of Mill Creek Apiary. Located off Main Street in Medford, Shoff manages hundreds of hives and provides much-needed pollination to local farmers. “Honeybees pollinate crops all across America. Sixty percent of the fruits and vegetables grown in our own state are solely dependent on honey bees for pollination,” he says. “Nature simply doesn’t provide enough bees to cover the farms, so we are hired to bring in our hives to give an extra dose of pollination each spring.”

In addition to pollinating, the Mill Creek Apiary’s hardworking honeybees produce a number of delicious varieties of honey and beeswax products enjoyed by their loyal customer base, both locally and across the country. Shoff has expanded his research along with a popular product line resulting in the apiary opening a retail space in downtown Medford just two years ago. “Our newest product is a unique creamed honey which is spreadable and tastes just amazing,” Shoff says.

Raw, unpasteurized honey produced from the honeybee, known as nature’s magicians, is thought to contain a number of curative properties and can be used to treat everything from skin conditions, boost immunity, reduce allergies and lessen coughs and colds.

We like to say … in your body or on your body,” Shoff says, adding that educating the community on the importance of honey bees is a high priority for the apiary. “We host Hive Dive Workshops throughout the season embracing our mission statement to ‘Keep the bees in the conversation, in your garden and on this Earth.’”

Because honeybees are sacred to the fragile balance of food systems and the world’s overall ecological health, broad-spectrum pesticides and herbicides are very harmful. “Who knew homeowners just trying to kill the weeds in between the cracks of their sidewalks could pose such a risk,” Shoff adds.

The folks at Mill Creek Apiary also raise their own honeybee queens and nucleus colonies for sale to area hobbyists. That’s how Shoff began his own journey from hobby beekeeping. “As a hobbyist, I was friends with the couple who started the apiary in 2005,” Shoff remarks. “Then, in 2018, when the couple retired, I took over the business and worked to rebrand it to include building an online sales presence.”

A lifetime gardener and outdoor enthusiast, Shoff says that making the decision to leave his profession working on civil engineering projects was easy. “My job was killing me. I’ll take a swarm of bees over driving in the car up and down the state all day,” he quips.

Mill Creek Apiary is located at 1 North Main St., in Medford. For more information,
call 609-451-BEES or visit 
www.MillCreekApiary.com, their Instagram @millcreekapiaryhoney and @millcreekbees, their Facebook @millcreekapiary.