Julie Thorn
The Beefarmer’s Wife, Sudbury, Suffolk
In 2016, following 30 years in Banking, I decided I wanted a change. My husband, Kevin Thorn, had been offered early retirement 6 months previously and I was no longer enjoying getting up at 530am and commuting. (There wasn’t a lot of housework being done either while I was in the office!)
Kevin was expanding his Beekeeping hobby into becoming a Commercial Beefarmer and suggested I help him market his honey and do a bit of book-keeping. I knew nothing about Beekeeping but I knew I had a lot of different skills from my time at the Bank, working with Small Businesses in London and leading a team of Business Relationship Managers in Norfolk.
2017 grew into a busy and successful year of marketing and wholesaling our honey and I was also enjoying having some quiet time to get creative with our Beeswax. Our honey & beeswax products are sold in over 80 outlets and distributed through 3 Milk Dairies in Suffolk. Kevin looks after our 140 Hives on 20 Apiaries, in and around Suffolk and North Essex. Kevin is focused on breeding healthy happy bees and producing pure Suffolk Honey, Essex Honey & Borage Honey.
In 2018 I started Busy Bees Cosmetics using our natural beeswax products to make and license our Lip Balms with essential oils of Geranium, Rose, Spearmint, Wild Orange, Lavender, Peppermint, Lemongrass and Unscented. Some of my Lip Balms were used on dog’s paws and I replaced the essential oils with sweet almond oil and developed a Pet Paw Lotion, to protect pets from dry and cracked paws.
We had seen lots of mixes of seeds for Bumble Bees and Butterflies and my husband Kevin, the Beefarmer, really wanted to find a mix of seeds specifically for Honey Bees. We were delighted to locally source Wild Flower Seeds and packaged these into lovely linen gift bags. The 20g of mixed seeds contains Borage, Red Clover, Phacelia, Crimson Clover & Birdsfoot Trefoil and when planted in Spring is designed to provide season long pollen and nectar for Honey Bees.
Next was our natural Wood Polish and during Lockdown I mastered Soap making. My first Soap was Bergamot & Lime with Turmeric added to our Beeswax & Honey and we now make and sell all our 8 Soaps including Lemongrass & Eucalyptus, Rose Geranium & Pink Peppercorns, Lavender with Propolis, Tea Tree & Rosemary, Mint & Chervil, Pine & Patchouli with Morning Detox Herbs and one Unscented. All our honey and beeswax cosmetics have been tested by Cosmetics Safety Solutions Ltd.
In 2022 we developed our Beeswax Melts and sourced some lovely hexagonal moulds to produce and package 5 different fragrances. Lemongrass, Sweat Pea & Lavender, Juniper Berry & Vanilla, Lime Basil & Mandarin and Fresh Linen.
During 2023 it took some time to perfect our Hand Cream as we wanted to include Propolis from our Beehives and obtain a consistency that is not greasy. Once we were 100% happy we had all our Creams tested successfully on different parts of the body and we are delighted we now offer Geranium Hand Cream, Peppermint Foot Cream, Lavender Night Face Cream, Pine & Patchouli Gardener’s Cream, Lemongrass Foot Cream, Rose Night Hand & Face Cream, Bergamot & Orange Body Cream and Unscented Body Cream.
It is amazing how our little business grows each year and we love hearing about happy shop owners and happy customers. My husband Kevin is busy with our Bees, making equipment in the Winter and then collecting Swarms in May & June and pouring honey for me to deliver all year round. We Gift Wrap lots of our Jars with colourful seasonal ribbons and honey spoons. We are delighted that we have an amazing lady Roxie in our team. Roxie helped during Christmas 2019 adding our labels and ribbons to everything we made and now works with us every week making our beeswax recipes, adding labels and ribbon and helping package orders. I love talking to and helping customers. I also love being organised and organising everything and everyone …. so I am happy.
We attended our first Trade Show in February 2023 at the Beekeeping Show in Telford and met a lot of Beekeepers and Beefarmers. We exhibited and sold a lot of our beeswax products at the show and have worked with 30 Beekeepers during 2023, supplying our beeswax products to display with their honey jars, on their market stalls and in shops around the UK. We have helped half of our beekeeping customers with a White Label service, adding their logo and business name to our labels. I really enjoy working with our Printer and their Graphic Designers to create amazing labels. To see some examples of these please visit our Facebook Album.
We are looking forward to attending this event again in February 2024.
You will find me posting photos on Busy Bees Cosmetics Facebook and Instagram and if you have any questions, please message me on 07557 105495 or email me hello@busybeescosmetics.co.uk
