When I was a little, nothing excited me more than packaging-texture, smell, colour, all of it, and as an adult, designing it for our range, I am still happily fascinated!!

My first (?) memory was when I was about 4 ( in 1960…gasp!!!) the fabulous slippery, crunchy, thick greaseproof paper with great retro typography ( yes I was a type nerd even then it seems!) around the blocks of salt that my grandmother bought, and stashed in a large earthenware jar, used for cooking and for the table. I was given a blunt kitchen knife and was allowed to spend hours carving shapes into the snowy white,curiously moist crystalline block before crumbling the satisfying mess into the jar.

Supermarket shopping didn’t really exist then, but I remember going to the Home and Colonial stores( forerunner of Sainsbury’s as it is now in the UK) where I was just level with the marble counter, and marvelled at the massive cheeses
( with real rinds) on display. All the tinned goods  sat in serried displays against  the wall…you asked for what you wanted cut and it was wrapped carefully in greaseproof paper and into my nan’s (woven material not plastic) shopping bag to be carried home.

Once unwrapped all the paper wrapping was then carefully smoothed out for use in baking, or rewrapping, and the string reused in the garden, as we grew all our own vegetables. The salt paper was deemed to be a fabulously noisy crow scarer apparently, since I always saw it flapping in the wind over the pea patch, in strings along with washed out tin cans tinkling away.

How times have changed! Despite the move to chemical free and skincare which I am proud to say that we pioneered in Tasmania, being the very first brand established here 18 years ago, I must say I laugh like a drain when I see all the “organic” brands out there who claim to be whiter than white,totally pure with no petrochemicals in it…in…er….plastic packaging, which is made of – yep – petrochemicals!! I simply cannot grasp this ethical/environmental mismatch, and we yet are continually explaining our own choice of eco-friendly brown recycleable glass, paper and tin packaging, because it is seen as not as “user friendly and convenient” as plastic ( !!!) despite the myriad reports of country sized rafts of plastic bottles clogging the oceans, and plastic being massively publicised as the number one environmental curse.

Worse, plastic has been proven to leaks endocrine disrupting chemicals into products ( we were telling people this 10 years ago but people glazed over) but all of this is disregarded because the pack “looks good” or is convenient to squeeze.

Dealing with clients, we scratch our heads at the desire for squeaky clean products, yet the willingness to buy acres of plastic packaging that it comes in, can anyone out there explain this? I know that we buy with our eyes, but conscience override seems to come into play too I guess.

Australia is in fact the worst place in the world to be a small manufacturer, because it is the hardest place in the world to source ethically sound packaging, due to our small population and hence small consumer demand.

Indeed we took part in a webinar recently about going into the Asian marketplace, and the single most interesting point was that Australian skincare is regarded as some of the cleanest and safest in the world BUT that the packaging was very poor.

That comes back, once again, to the miniscule size of the market in Australia- packaging supply companies have to eat too, so will only bring in what they are guaranteed to sell, or you need to order 10,000 of one kind which is beyond the reach of the average small business….so the spiral is complete….the fabulous designer packaging can only be accessed by the massive multinationals, but even then, they still choose plastic, driven by consumers.

Confused? So are we.

We’ll just stick to our good old fashioned, eco friendly glass, recycled paper and cardboard, and get creative as we have for the last 18 years and make it look as good as we can…..but it’s funny, we are seeing everyone doing the same….so we must be doing something right!

There is apparently an old Australian ad with the catchphrase”Oils ain’t oils” used to sell a particular brand of engine oil I gather, whose general point I would imagine ( not having seen it, being a Brit) was that not all oils function the same, or indeed are of the same quality.

How true that is when you look at the criminal deception perpetrated on the female population in terms of the cosmetic creams made by multinationals….at least 99% of the product is bulldust and the rest is (free)water!!

Perhaps I should recap…I started this business because I had really bad eczema, and was in a sales job with a lot of exposure to the public which was really mortifying with red, sore incredibly sensitive dry skin, so I tried every product on the planet to fix it.

Unfortunately, all of them without exception made the condition worse, because the synthetic scents, mineral oil  and (possibly)toxic paraben preservatives( derived from petroleum) made my skin break out, sore and red  and the lack of any real substance ( good natural plant oils) in them offered no protection whatsoever left on my skin to keep my skin’s own moisture in.

The anatomy of a commercially made, profit focussed moisture cream is very  simple- pump in as much water, suspended in the cheapest fats available ( in the past mineral oil,  but now mostly chemically derived emulsifiers) designed to hold as much water as possible ( “oil in water formulas”lots of water with a small amount of cheap oil …water is free) and offer a cream that is “easily absorbed ” which is what consumers have been led to believe happens.

In fact as you spread this water based confection onto your skin, the water evaporates and leaves nothing of any value behind( no good quality waxes are used because that pushes up production costs and decreases profits) to actually “absorb” but as the cream has seemingly disappeared …voila! Another trick!

Indeed your skin dries out nicely with every application, you use more and buy more…great for the manufacturer/brand!

I personally think that this is criminal- a double whammy rip-off for consumers-because the poor consumer, exhorted to buy the product by multi million dollar ad budgets in the media, gets a hugely overpriced product that simply does nothing but-often- irritate the skin and dry it our further!

What I was seeking was a thick, rich, luscious ( 100% natural, truly chemical free moisture cream) that would remain on the skin for 12 hours or more, and really do its job, but more REALLY soothe and leave all the good stuff in it behind on your skin to genuinely protect it, and stop moisture loss …oh, and fix my poor eczema and dry skin!

To do this, I discovered, I needed to make my own, based on the superb quality that I wanted, that simply is not available commercially,not based on cost.

So I returned to my grandmother’s old beeswax ( leaves a microfine protective, moisture trapping film on the skin)and honey ( moisturising, soothing, draws moisture to the skin) super rich formulae which are quite the opposite to commercial creams- water in oil, which means a lot of skin friendly easily absorbed super fine plant oils- and REALLY work – the incredible feedback we get on the independant review site WOWMOW says it all.

We also used fabulous old staple, used for thousands of years, superb extra virgin olive oil and of course our signature healing herb Calendula,that grows wild in almost every garden, and was my Grnadmother’s favourite skin herb.

Within weeks my skin was healed, moist and dry skin was history….and this is the feedback we get time and again from clients.

BUT, this of course presented a dilemma when attempting to make the product for sale,because all these ingredients cost FAR more than water and petroleum based ingredients, hence our products cost more, but you, our clients agree that they are well worth it, and indeed incredible value for money- take a look at the excellent external site  WOWMOW which offers independant reviews of businesses posted by happy customers, it appears that we are not the only ones who-rather immodestly perhaps-think that we are doing a great job.

Read for yourself what they think, and please add your own thoughts should you wish to, we love reading it, makes us feel good, and tells others that we don’t tell porkies like all the rest!

Essentially we are making a handmade, “homemade” quality ( mum’s yummy cake with butter instead of the cheap supermarket cake with margarine or trans fats, if you will) just like all the artisan growers and makers at the now widespread Farmer’s Markets…and that is why quality costs money!

I remember that one client once said “If your skincare were food it would be caviar!”

It is very gratitying to see such great product feedback and reviews because unlike commercial multinationals,we cannot spend multi millions of dollars on promoting an illusion..  we  reinvest all of our revenue in the quality of the products, paying Australian staff , supporting our local suppliers,and quality  ingredients, all of which you can see and feel in our products.

Now winter is upon us ( and the snow is down to the 700 metre mark on the mountain in Hobart today) it is even more important to have a super rich protective cream to knock the dry skin ( face and hands)on the head this chilly season, so we have a great cream special on -buy one cream get a second ( of equal or lesser value) at HALF PRICE!  Enjoy!!

I love Bali…having been there about 6 times in the past 20 years- it used to be on the way to and from the UK when it was a regular stopover for the major airlines, pre-Bali Bombing-I have always admired the beauty and positive nature of the people.
It is very interesting how- despite the massive onslaught of tourism- their Hindu-Animist culture survives and even thrives, beyond the gamelan driven tourist shows, in a deeply superstitious and ritual bound society…a ritual for everything performed with grace and beauty, from the delicate woven offerings with rice and tropical flowers to the seemingly endless full on colour and noise temple ceremonies.
The people are gentle, positive and and friendly, and their island paradise green and beautiful too- but lately the bulldozers and rapacious building are starting to nibble away at the very thing that visitors come to see…the tranquillity shattered by jackhammers and building traffic.
There is still beauty to be found though if you move into the deep countryside, with delightful snapshot moments of ducks in a row being herded through the fluorescent green lush rice paddies, and of course the myriad iridescent rainbows of dragonflies.
It is interesting and very sad to see that there is a flip side to this postcard of paradise though, in the appalling abuse and malreatment of the mentally ill who are often chained in isolation by their relatives very simply, not out of deliberate cruelty, but simply having no medical options available to treat them.
I watched an SBS television documentary on this recently ,I have to say it broke my heart to see this,and I resolved to try and help in some way, primarily by supporting those to care enough to be active, and DO something on the ground, such as the wonderful Indonesian psychiatrist, Dr. Luh Ketut Suryani ,who is working in a desperately underfunded ( self funded actually) programme to help these people that society- and the government who has recently cut their meagre funding- has no room for. Have a look at her website, it is fantastic, and we strongly encourage you to directly donate should you wish to.

We as a business we have locally supported Breast Cancer, Cancer Council, Lifeline, Brightside Sanctuary and other animal charities, but  resolved some time ago to also support external causes that primarily help women, for obvious reasons really- we are lucky enough to have the freedom and money to use disposable income to buy ethical, environmentally sound products, but most of the world’s poor women in developing countries do not have clean water, or enough food, let alone the kind of financial/educational freedoms that we take for granted.

We are so very lucky in Australia- having been to Vietnam, India, and South East Asia over the years the hard life that women lead in these cultures leave you feeling very privileged, and slightly ashamed of complaining about our daily perceived  ”hardships”- but the joy that these women share with you, despite their circumstance, just makes your heart swell with pride at the resourcefulness, persistence and ingenuity of womankind.

The primary focus for me in terms of intent has always been the Fistula Hospital in Addis Abbaba (Ethiopia) which was established by the incredible Australian Dr Catherine Hamlin in 1959, to help women who have developed a fistula due to tearing during childbirth- rather than going into detail, click on the the link to find about this appalling condition, that is eminently fixable.

What struck me like a fist in the chest is that these women, who leak urine/faeces through no fault of their own, are totally ostracised within their communities- often days walk from the nearest bus, who in any case will not carry the women because of the involuntary smell and mess….some have lived apart from their communities for years.

My friend S ( to protect her confidentiality) who has volunteered recently with Medecins Sans Frontieres in Ethiopia ( amongst other nations) has said that it was one of her hardest assignments simply due to the general malnourishment of the population, particularly of course the women who as a result of this lack of nutrition are not able to develop a strong enough pelvic girdle to birth successfully without this complication ( fistula)in many cases.

The decider for me was reading in one of the Australian weekend newspapers about a woman who begged for 7 years in a local bus station to just get the bus fare to distant Addis Abbaba and the potential salvation of the hospital.

I think I cried for a week when I read that.

I am not religious but…Thank God for Dr Catherine Hamlin.

So…we are going to do something about making real and concrete donations from the sale of the products that you love, to help these two organisations concretely and directly.

YOU CAN HELP- WE CAN DO IT!! We will keep you informed as to how is going, with more detail soon, probably linked to our Facebook page so that you can see directly what is happening.

My journey into the mysterious, dark, warm world of the beehive began on a motorbike, on the back roads of Tasmania in 1989 when I travelled to Australia from Britain in 1989,with the imperative to get to Tasmania as a priority- thanks to naturalist David Bellamy and the publicity he generated during the Lake Pedder campaign some 10 years earlier, when he was ( gasp!) arrested.

We in Britain (where I was born) were amazed in the early 80′s by the dark green, massive Gordon River on our TV screens, and the drama being played out against this backdrop-it fired my imagination.

I just had to get there…it reminded me of what I imagined the Great Greasy Limpopo River looked like, when reading Rudyard Kipling’s “Just So” stories when I was a child (Jeez, that dates me doesn’t it!)

So, 9 years later, I set off on my BIG motorcycle journey around Tasmania,on a trusty old bulletproof CX 500 Honda, having a ball along the way, getting my bike repaired by fishermen in Strahan, my kidneys pretty much shaken out on the ungraded road to the Arthur River that wasn’t even marked on the map, fighting off scary possums on my first night in a tent – trying to eat fruit that I had unwittingly left by the mozzy mesh “window-and falling under the spell of the stunning deep wilderness of the Apple Isle.

When the only wildlife you see in London are a few blackened, asthmatic sparrows hanging on telephone lines, are an urban gal all your life, you are kinda bowled over…and scared to death by noises out in the bush!

Best of all the road on the wild remote Tasmanian West Coast from Zeehan to Strahan, a smooth new highway curve that motorcyclists dream of clinging to and leaning into,and the intoxicating scent of the bush, with all the Leatherwood flowers in bloom in the rainforest, and the impossibly beautiful view of the golden Henty Dunes backing onto the wild ocean…I was awestruck by it all.

And so I discovered Leatherwood honey

Once you have tasted Leatherwood honey, found only in Tasmania with its assertive, strong rainforest flower scent and flavour you will never go back to all the other wimpy, limpwristed, pretender honeys, trust me!
I carried that honey in an increasingly sticky plastic bag in my gearsack, eating it one blissful spoon at a time, making my already fragrant Lapsang Souchong tea a symphony in my mouth.

I was hooked.

It was even better in our products I discovered, and feels incredible on your skin, in the rich moisture creams that we handmake- as honey is a healing humectant( brings moisture to the skin) and beeswax traps that moisture in.

(We have sample size Leatherwood Honey 15 gm available at only $3.50- ask us when you place an order)

We have a fabulous special this month if you would like to try for yourself – if you spend over $100 on products on our website you will recieve our bestselling Rosehip C Ultrarich Eyecare oil 25ml valued at $24.95!

More soon from the hive…

Welcome to the first ever Voice of the Beehive blog, indeed my first ever foray into this exciting Brave New World!

Thanks to our shiny new website (we retired the 10 year old one to a green pasture in cyberspace recently) we can communicate with you all easily and you can give us feedback which we would love to hear.

I hope to bring you interesting information, tips and probably -more realistically- rants about the world in general that I hope you will enjoy.

Please let me know if I bore you, enrage you, or please you, but cut me some slack, as I am new at this, already!!!

Me? Am I an expert?

No, I’m a 50 something individual, larger than life (physically, and ideologically…something to do with being a raving foodie I suspect) that started this business 17 years ago, when I was young and momentarily peachy, in a desperate attempt to solve my own skin care problems (eczema so awful that it made the Singing Detective look like he had perfect skin, trust me!) and take away the pain and embarrassment of flaking onto clients big shoulderpads, in the mad world of publishing in the 70′s and 80′s.

Not a good look.

Solve them I did by returning to, and tweaking, my grandmother’s old formulae that she made from garden herbs when I was young….and foolishly decided that a business introducing the concept of chilled, edible skincare,made of familiar food ingredients, without all the chemical crap in it, would set the world on fire.

I just wanted to make my skin healthy and comfortable, without polluting me or the planet, and succeeded, I’m pleased to say, without wishing to be immodest.

Well, it has taken 17 years to turn into a small business… a cult product if you will, all by word of mouth, thanks to our loyal band of clients worldwide,and here we are today!

It is interesting that along the way I found that there were millions of women just like me who told us that they too love real, good food,real textures,colours and the scent of reality… and hate the plastic artifice of the cosmetic world in general.

Like me they choke on those sickly synthetic scents that grab you by the throat in the shampoo aisle of the pharmacy/supermarket/so called “natural” skincare stores..  leaving you gasping, holding your breath and running for the exit.

Along the way I discovered that I’m not the only one who does not shave their legs/underarms,relishing the natural feel of my skin, don’t use the plastic silicon hair stuff, or buy into the pretension and lies of all the ads on TV.

But old hippie I ain’t

…I love convenience just like the next gal!

I love the scent of real flowers, the bush, the ozone fresh sea, and the biscuit- like warm smell of my dog’s clean fur after her bath in her very own pet soap (Gorgeous Georgie’s Gloss bar- you can do that when you own the business!)

That’s why our Beauty and the Bees products smell of what they are made from (beautiful green olive oil, Leatherwood honey, beeswax, nut oils) real and with substance, and not something chemicalised, watery and sickly.

Natural things like honey smell and taste better…