The Enchanted Bee Apothecary, Frequently asked questions

Here you'll find answers to some commonly asked questions about our products.

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Are your products Hypoallergenic?

When formulating our recipes, we avoid the use of Shea Butter or Coconut Oil because many people with tree-nut allergies may have a reaction to them. We use family, friends and co-workers as our product testers (some of whom do have tree-nut & other types of allergies). To date, none of them have had an allergic reaction to our products.

That being said, NO natural ingredient based skincare product is truly Hypoallergenic. Just because a particular ingredient is not derived from tree-nuts, does not necessarily mean that it wasn't produced in the same area that tree-nut products were produced. Every person is different and every person's allergies are different. We STRONGLY recommend that you perform a patch test before using ANY new skincare product for the first time. If you experience itching, redness or any other sort of negative reaction - DO NOT USE IT!

If you don't use artificial colors, flavors or scents, what do you use?

All of the scents, colorants (like our tinted lip balm), and flavors are derived from custom crafted herbal oil infusions that we create ourselves. We start with a variety of herbs, flowers & spices, like real Vanilla Beans. Then we infuse them in natural carrier oils such as Jojoba Oil, to produce our natural colors, flavors and scents.

Why are your products shades of green, beige or brown and not pretty pastel colors or white like other skin care products?

The butters and oils we use in our products are unrefined, meaning they are in their natural state and haven't been chemically bleached. Quite often, the chemical solvents and bleaches used in the refining process strip most of the beneficial qualities from these ingredients. We use them as Mother Nature made them, therefore the products take on the earth tones of the ingredients used. We do not add artificial colorants to make them fancy colors.

What do you mean by "Unrefined"?

Unrefined means that the ingredient has not been subject to a chemical refining process. Most often, unrefined butters and oils are extracted by hand. It is a very laborious process which makes unrefined products more expensive. Most of this hand extraction is done by indigenous people and the pay they receive for their hard work helps to support their families. It is, obviously, much more cost effective to use machines to do the extracting. To make the mechanized process easier & faster, high heat and chemical solvents like Hexane (a component of gasoline) are used to expedite the separation of the butter and oils from the seeds or nuts. The extracted butter is then processed with additional chemicals to remove the smell and color. Not only does this refining process destroy as much as 95% of the beneficial properties, it also leaves behind traces of potentially harmful chemicals in the butters and oils.