Meet the Vendor: Oh Honey!

Welcome to Meet the Vendor, a new series on Jersey City Eats that will profile different vendors from all the Farmers' Markets around Jersey City. We have a wonderful and constantly growing market scene in Jersey City with unique, dedicated vendors and I encourage everyone to take advantage.

Today's vendor is Oh Honey Apiaries who can be found at various markets around Jersey City Thursday with their local, raw honey. Thanks for participating, Darius and Tine!

                                         All photos provided by Oh Honey

Tell us about yourselves.
We are a small treatment-free apiary with locations in JC Heights, Crown Heights (Brooklyn), Union City, and Columbia County, NY. The beekeeper, Darius Plavinskas, started keeping bees on our roof and then expanded his hives to the other locations. Darius is dedicated to sustainable and organic beekeeping and regularly attends conferences on the best way to maintain his bees without any damage to the environment and the bees.

Oh Honey’s products are completely treatment free, which means that we don’t use any chemicals in the honey or on the bees. The honey is extracted cold directly from the comb, which ensures that all the best and most valuable parts of the honey are included and intact (for example, propolis and pollen). There is some evidence that pollen-rich honey is successful in treating seasonal allergies. Propolis, a substance that bees use to protect their hives against pests, has many health-enhancing properties and has been shown to be anti-carcinogenic. In other words: our honey is chock-full of good stuff!

Darius is also raising queen bees and creates colonies of resilient and winter-hardy bees.

What other markets do you participate in around Jersey City? 
On Sunday mornings, Oh Honey can be found in the Riverview-Fisk Farmers Market. We will also be in the 6th Borough Market on the remaining dates (9/14/2014 and 10/12/2014). Starting on September 9th 2014, Oh Honey will be in the Historic Downtown Farmers Market by the Grove Street Path on Monday evenings.

What are your top-sellers?
People seem to like all our varieties of honey.

Do you have any personal favorites amongst your products?
We also like all varieties of our honey, but are very excited to be offering different sizes now (16 oz, 12 oz, 10 oz, and 6 oz). The jars look really nice and make great gifts.

What are some of your other favorite stalls at the Jersey City markets?
We really love our local farm stand by Stony Hill Farms where we buy fresh milk every weekend. Also really great is Gina's Bakery (their pies are out of this world!). Another favorite is Cholita’s Dessert Bar (you should try their Sangria Paletas!).

Any other information you think customers would want to know?

We also have an online store at https://squareup.com/market/oh-honey. In the future, we may be offering weekend workshops on treatment –free beekeeping at our upstate New York apiary. We may also offer some beekeeping classes in JC Heights. Stay tuned!