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Shampoo bars are everywhere right now. Clean beauty brands love them. Sustainable living accounts swear by them. And if you’ve spent any time on natural haircare content online, you’ve probably seen someone holding up a little bar of soap and claiming it changed their hair forever. But is any of that actually true? Or is it just a trend dressed up in eco-friendly packaging? As someone who formulates and makes shampoo bars by hand — using plant-based oils, botanicals, and ingr

The Plan In December of 2019, I ordered five packages of bees from an apiary in Tennessee. The plan was simple. My grandfather — a beekeeper his entire life, the man who carried this tradition from Moldova across generations — was going to fly over and be with me when they arrived. He was going to show me how to install them into the hives. How to read the frames. How to find a queen. How to do everything I’d only read about in books and watched on YouTube videos at midnight.

Last week I introduced you to the 9 natural clays we use in our handcrafted soaps. This week it's time for Part 2 — the botanical powders. If the clays are the mineral foundation of our soaps, the botanical powders are the superfoods. These are ingredients sourced from plants, algae, spices, and ancient Ayurvedic traditions — each one packed with compounds that do something specific and meaningful for your skin. Some of them you'll recognize. Others might surprise you. All of

Here’s something I love telling people who pick up one of our soaps: the color you see isn’t from dye. It’s from the earth. Every bar of soap we make at Sunshine Bees is colored and enhanced with natural clays and powders — sourced from places as close as France and as remote as the ancient salt lakes of Siberia. Each clay has a story, a mineral makeup, and a specific set of benefits for your skin. None of them are interchangeable. Most people think clay is just clay — you pu

Walk down the honey aisle at any grocery store and you’ll find shelf after shelf of golden jars — some labeled “natural,” some “pure,” some “organic.” And then, tucked somewhere nearby, you’ll find one labeled “raw.” What does raw actually mean? And is it worth paying more for? As a beekeeper whose family has kept hives across four generations — from Moldova and Ukraine to our 33-acre farm here in Franklin, NY — I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this question. The short

I’ve been around bees my whole life — my family has kept hives for four generations, from Moldova and Ukraine to our 33-acre farm here in the Catskills. And I still learn things about bees that genuinely stop me in my tracks. So if you think bees are just the things you swat away at a picnic, buckle up. These little creatures are some of the most fascinating, dramatic, and frankly unhinged members of the animal kingdom. Here are 13 facts about honeybees and honey that I genui

Walk into any natural beauty store and you'll spot beeswax on ingredient labels everywhere — from lip balms to lotions to body butters. But what does beeswax actually do for your skin, and why do so many clean beauty products rely on it? Beekeeping runs four generations deep in my family. My relatives still tend hives in Moldova and Ukraine, where this tradition began. When I started my own apiary here in Franklin, NY, I brought that heritage with me — including a deep respec