Beeswax, propolis, vitamin E: what are they actually doing in your lip balm?

Lesson one: your lips. The skin there is only a handful of cell layers thick, way thinner than the rest of your face. No sweat glands, almost no oil glands. Your lips basically can’t look after themselves.

And here’s a fact nobody tells you: you swallow a little of whatever you put on your lips, every single day. Kind of makes you want to know what’s in there, right?

That’s why every jar of ours is built around three ingredients with a very long résumé. Meet the team.

Young worker bees make beeswax from eight tiny glands on their bellies. It comes out as little flakes, and a colony needs around 6 to 8 pounds of honey to make one pound of wax. Talk about effort.

It’s a mix of more than 300 compounds and melts at about 145°F, way above body temperature. So instead of sliding off, it forms a soft, flexible layer on your lips that helps slow down moisture loss. Comforting beeswax helps protect lips from feeling dry, which is exactly why it’s our number one.

It’s also seriously old-school. Around 150 AD, the physician Galen made one of the first cold creams with it. And it’s an approved food additive (E901) that makes fruit and candy shiny.

Propolis means “defender of the city” in Greek. Bees make it from sticky resin they collect from tree buds, then use it to seal every crack in the hive.

Now the wild part. If a mouse sneaks into a hive and dies there, the bees can’t carry it out. So they coat the whole thing in propolis and seal it in. Scientists have found more than 300 compounds in propolis and have studied its plant flavonoids in the lab for their antioxidant properties.

Honest note: that research is about propolis itself, not about any lip balm, ours included. In our jar, propolis brings a comforting feel. And if you’re allergic to bee products or propolis, please skip it.

In 1922, scientists discovered vitamin E while studying why rats couldn’t have babies. That’s why its chemical name, tocopherol, comes from the Greek words for “childbirth” and “to carry”. Didn’t see that coming, did you?

Vitamin E is actually a family of eight compounds. Your skin gets a lot of it through its own oils, which your lips barely make. In our balm it pulls double duty: it leaves lips feeling beautifully conditioned and keeps the oils and waxes from going rancid.

Label-reading tip: ingredients are listed from most to least, down to 1%. Look for “Cera Alba” (beeswax), “Propolis Extract” and “Tocopherol”. Congratulations, you’re basically an expert now.