MEET THE MAKER
Hello, I'm Zena (the 'Zee' in ZeezBeez), Soap Queen and bee-partner. Camera-shy Colin does his best to keep out of the way and keep the bees happy.
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Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll 'bee-gin'. It all began a few years ago when we moved to Bouchland Farm in beautiful North Devon. I wondered what we could do with any honey and wax our bees didn't need and discovered the wonderfully fragrant fascination of handmade soaps. One thing led to another ...
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CREATING A BUZZ
Once upon a time, we were living in some outstandingly lovely countryside in North Devon (hello Burrington - what a beautiful place you are), but were saddened to find so few bees and butterflies around. We decided to do something about it and limited the cutting of hedges and added plants to encourage the creatures back.
We then decided to add a beehive. Now we love bees so much that we have added further hives to create a sustainable little business bringing you things made with stuff the bees don't need to survive.
Things steadily improved and we had loads of butterflies flapping about, along with the heavenly music of all kinds of bees buzzing around - here's a picture of Mavis going about her buzziness.
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In 2022 we relocated from North Devon to the wonderful village of Polruan in Cornwall for the next step on our adventure. Our mission is the same even if the bees are different. (Bees are happiest where they are brought up, so Mavis stayed in North Devon). We now have native black bees brought up in Cornwall, and the colony's Queen is also called Mavis. Cornish Mave, what a coincidence!
So...
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ZeezBeez uses natural products from hives of happy bees that eat their honey, have not been treated with chemicals and are kept to let them do what they want as far as possible – they know best! (Please click the Beekeeping tab to learn more about 'our partnership with the bees').
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BEE NICE TO OUR WORLD - We have realised that we can contribute to the move towards being kinder to Mother Earth. Our wish is to convert people from plastic-packaged products to using natural, handmade soap and shampoo & body bars. We try
to keep the prices as fair as we can to encourage such a change, whilst sustaining ourselves. Our bars have so much goodness in them that we usually find customers no longer need to rely so much on other expensive products (often in plastic). This can make them cost-effective. We don't buy plastic packaging, but we usually re-use any sent to us. We are also the first UK certified palm-oil free soap company in the UK, which you can read about by clicking here and are very proud to be 'Plastic Free Champions'. We now have a bee in our bonnet about this issue and will always be looking for, and receptive to, ways to do better.
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Bee happy X