Beekeeper Tone Bryn is fascinated by bees themselves, but especially with a view to bees' health-promoting properties.
I want to make skin care products that are natural and healthy, smiles Tone when we visit her at the laboratory at Nesbru. The bees' products must be used, because they have some unique properties, she claims.
Imagine one oil that nourishes the skin and is so gentle that children can use it. Every single ingredient is chosen for a reason and there are no extra fillers. The products are water-free and therefore do not need preservatives.
Tone believes we have no use for everything we fill up the bathroom shelf and toiletries with. She develops hand cream, hair treatment, cold cream and scrub that can be used by the whole family.
Tone Bryn in BeeKi invests as an entrepreneur, and uses the health-promoting properties of bees in skin care products.
Photo BeeKi
Her background is from pharmacy and she has a PhD in the immune system. When she quit her job as clinical research director in a Norwegian biotech company in 2021, she made a big life choice and invested in beekeeping in the broadest sense. Life has revolved around beekeeping since then.
What is needed?
There is a long way to a new commercial product. The Norwegian Food Safety Authority is a control body for cosmetics, and there is extensive legislation that the manufacturer must comply with.
In addition to the products having a positive effect on the skin, I am concerned with the environment and justice, so I choose the best I can find, she claims. I use my own peeling wax, because this is the freshest wax from the cube. From own beekeeping, of course. I found a Norwegian organic oil from rapeseed, which is included in one of the skin oils.
Otherwise there are several raw materials, e.g. marula oil from South Africa, a country the family has a special relationship with, where a certain effort resulted in the establishment of a health service, on an island where such did not exist. But that's another story. The face oil she has developed contains i.a. rosehip seed, elderberry and Norwegian mullet seed oil, and exotic myrrh. Such products must have a shelf life date, and it should be as long as possible to have a good life on the shop shelf.
We were unable to find anyone who could do the comprehensive stability analysis here in Norway, but we did find one in Greece. So we traveled down with a large number of samples. There, the oils were subjected to accelerated durability testing at high/low temperature, and we now know that the product has a shelf life of 12 months after opening, which is very good, smiles Tone, who launched the first products at an event last November.
Tone has collaborated with the company KIWA in Oslo, which wrote the safety report that requires, based on the results of the stability analysis, documentation of each individual ingredient, as well as the suppliers of these. She saved a lot of time by putting away the writing job, time that a beekeeping entrepreneur does not have.
What is the plan next?
Currently, the products are sold from our own online store as well as in some selected skin care and wellness locations.
From now on, Tone will find out who gets to sell the products, and she knows very well where she can imagine seeing her oils on the shop shelves. So she is already in the process of developing new products, planning another trip to Greece with 5 new products for testing. They will be ready for launch before the summer. She also wants to develop something for acne skin and other problem skin. We are guessing that she will soon include Norwegian propolis as an ingredient. If you can deliver raw materials, Tone would like to hear from you, you can find her here at beeki.com.
Article first published by the Norwegian Beekeepers Association, issue no. 1, 2023
by Astrid Bjerke Lund, Editor
Our contact information
Email: kontakt@beeki.comTelephone: +47400 66 313Visiting address: Helsehjørnet Fekjan 7B, 2nd floor 1394 Nesbru