How We Came to Bee…100% chemical free since 1993!

…and why our first ingredient is quality!

Suffering from eczema and rosacea aggravated by mainstream synthetic skincare products, Jill Saunders started making her own moisture cream using her English grandmother’s old herbal recipes, which she used as a child growing up in the UK.

These ancient formulae were in turn adapted from those created by Galen (129-200 AD), the great Roman philosopher/doctor, whose methods are still used in medicine today.

When Jill came to Tasmania in 1993, riding around the island on her motorbike, she fell in love with the uniquely fragrant Tasmanian Leatherwood Honey.

Because of the intense moisturising healing properties, Jill started using Tasmanian’s unique Leatherwood Honey and beeswax in her cream.

From the back of her motorcycle, Jill started to sell that cream in Salamanca Market (some customers still remember her from those days!) long before organic and natural were known in skincare.

The stall in Saturday Salamanca Market is still going and growing after 18 years!

Beauty & the Bees has grown from that very humble beginning to a warm & inviting retail store in Centrepoint Shopping Centre in Hobart and a strong online web presence www.beebeauty.com( since 1999) grown solely by word of mouth and the unmatcheable excellence of our product.

100% chemical free, luxuriously rich products that really work, handmade to unique 2000 year old formulae, made ethically in a small business by 12 women just like you.

As for the original cream that Jill created?

It’s the incredibly rich Honey & Olive Marigold Moisture Cream,our best selling cream even after all these years!

Good things never go out of fashion……

Why Choose Beauty and the bees?

When you buy Beauty & the Bees products, you’re buying premium quality, gentle, 100% natural, freshly handmade skin care, Baby Bee baby care and truly natural hair care ( including our famous Beer Shampoo) products handmade with Tasmania’s unique Leatherwood Honey and beeswax, that are incredible value for money. We are proud to say that: 

• All products and importantly ingredients are food products -time tested only on humans, not animals
• All the products are ethical, biodegradable, and 100% free of palm oil.
• Gentle and pure, with a full range of unscented options they are clean, safe and suitable for everyone, especially those with sensitive skin, eczema psoriasis and dermatitis
• We use no plastic packaging -we encourage you to reduce, reuse, recycle by using only glass jars, tins and  recycled paper bags, and minimising print materials by having a fully interactive website.

What’s "natural?"

In today’s marketing-driven world, a product can claim to be “natural” even if it just contains a miniscule amount of herbal ingredients in a sea of chemical ingredients- we have been highlighting this for 20 years!

Beauty & the Bees products are guaranteed Genuinely Fresh, Handmade, TRULY Natural  -that’s why they are so pure and gentle.

• All the products are free of SLS, SLES, Parabens, Petrochemicals, and anything synthetic.
• We do not use nasty colours,synthetic scents such as "Fig" "Melon" "Raspberry" that can be smelt 100 yards away
• They are human, animal and earth friendly- 100% biodegradeable.

We actually hand make our products from scratch in small batches inhouse, using the uniquely Tasmanian Leatherwood Honey & Beeswax, and chill the products containing water such as moisture creams instead of using harsh toxic preservatives.

Unlike virtually all skincare businesses which buy in mass produced premixes or base products and simply scent/colour/bottle them, we perform the whole manufacturing process – from cleaning the raw beeswax brought straight from the hive and making our own macerated herb oils with organic herbs and flowers, through to combining these fine ingredients into a premium-quality product, left to set naturally like yoghurt in the jar.

We only use all natural food ingredients such as virgin certified organic olive oil, avocado oil, rosehip oil, jojoba oil, ground nut meal, pure essential oils, natural colours ( spices, vegetables) that you can safely eat.

This way, we have absolute control of what is in it,and list EVERY ingredient.

In addition to healing honey, we - for example- :

• puree fresh cucumbers, and freshly milled Tasmanian oats  direct from Callington Mill in Oatlands to our Oatmeal & Cucumber Soap
• we add our best selling moisture cream (Honey & Olive) to our Facial/Moisture Bar
• the orange colour in our soap (eg: Island Flowers) is from paprika, not a synthetic colour
• use fresh goat’s milk direct from the farm  in the Huon Valley

Thank you to all the contributors to the fabulous feedback on WOMO, and on our website www.beebeauty.com which shows that people all over the world love our products!