What's the Buzz? All-Natural Lip Balm, Hand-Crafted in Maplewood

Jacob Schneider, his brother, Luke, and their best friend Charlie Gauthier started BuzzBroz  four summers ago with two hives and a taste for sweet honey. “When we started processing the honey, we had all this great wax. We had to find a way to use it. Green isn’t just a marketing tool for us," Schneider said. 

Lip balm ended up at the top of the list. “We did the research in two years, first on the web, then with the help of people from the Eastern Missouri Beekeepers Association," he said.

They made sample batches, and settled on four flavors: vanilla, blueberry acai, mango tangerine and spearmint.

“The first year, our lip balm started out too firm, so we added grapeseed oil," Scheider said. "We also use shea butter and mango oil. We only use all-natural ingredients and food quality flavorings. The acai in the blueberry is an anti-oxidant."

Gauthier crafts the displays from high-quality recycled clean wood. “Charlie works in construction, so he came up with a design to use the small pieces that usually get tossed,” Schneider said. Gauthier also designed the logo: a worker bee set against the perfect pattern of a honeycomb.

“Luke is the head beekeeper,” Schneider said. “Two or three years ago colony collapse was a big deal–viruses and mites, a fungus. A big culprit is the heavy use of commercial pesticides. Luke uses an integrated management system to keep the hives healthy.”

All three harvest the honey. “Last year, from four hives, we ended up with 200 pounds of honey. Two hives produced great; two were slow. We’re expecting more this year with five,”  Schneider said.

The first step is to cut the wax caps off the combs with a hot knife. Then the frames go into a centrifuge to extract the honey. Impurities are strained out of the wax with a cheesecloth.

Last year, BuzzBroz produced 500 tubes of lip balm. “We ran out of our own wax this spring, so we bought a blue-ribbon winning wax from an Eastern Missouri Beekeepers member," he said.

The balm is hand-crafted in small batches 50 sticks at a time, but they’re prepared to go bigger. Schneider said Burt's Bees is their big competition nationally.

You’ll find BuzzBroz lip balms at All About the Cloud,  2712 Sutton  Boulevard, in Maplewood.

You’ll likely find Jacob Schneider most sunny days at home, working his heirloom tomato farm, also in Maplewood.