Therapi is a honey-based skincare line that has been making a lot of buzz lately, and it’s not just from their bees. The lovely founder, Tanya Hawkes, spent 25 years working as a bee-keeper, and her love for, as she puts it, “nature’s liquid gold” grew steadily over the years. Her ideology treats cosmetics as food for the skin and she believes that honey can be a powerhouse ingredient for all sorts of skin woes.

Therapi has won many awards and it’s truly a product line that delivers in terms of quality, aesthetics, and performance. The brand makes sure it gives back to fuzzy buzzy helpers by donating 5% of their proceeds to bee conservation projects. We were lucky enough to find time from Tanya’s busy schedule for her to give us a better look behind the scenes.

How did the idea for Therapi come to life?

Therapi grew out of my search for truly natural skincare and a lifetime spent working with bees and honey. It all began with a passion for nature and has blossomed into an award-winning skincare company with the help of some exceptionally talented people – including my amazing daughter Esme, who now is the other co-director of Therapi.

What makes your line of skincare products so special?

We have created a range of certified organic skincare products based on the purifying, nourishing and moisturizing properties of honey. We blend only the highest quality cold-pressed and organic botanical extracts to make skinfood products that are true to our philosophy of beauty as wellness and are pure enough to eat!

Tanya, you are calling honey ‘nature’s liquid gold’. Can you tell us more about it’s amazing properties and why your brand is centered around it?

Honey’s unique composition holds the secret to beautiful skin. It is nature’s miraculous superfood and medicine. We use honey as our key active ingredient to naturally moisturise, nourish, purify and protect the skin because it has so many exceptional properties:

• a natural humectant, meaning it attracts and retains moisture, maintaining skin at optimal hydration levels.
• contains various vitamins and enzymes as well as trace elements such as potassium, iron, zinc and magnesium, which nourish the skin and improve cell production.
• rich in antioxidants, honey also helps regenerate damaged tissue, deflects free radicals, improves skin tone and elasticity and reduces signs of ageing.
• a powerful anti-bacterial agent that is excellent for treating acne, as well as reducing redness and inflammation.

What roles do bees play in your company? Are they sort of part of your staff?

Bees and their relationship with flowers are at the heart of everything we do! They are our raison d’etre and are essential to the production of almost all our ingredients – not only to produce the honey, beeswax and propolis that we use but they also pollinate the majority of out botanical ingredients. We are lucky to work in the beautiful Cotswold countryside and for most of the year we are surrounded by the constant buzz of bees. We take inspiration from the way they dance to communicate to the way they make the world more beautiful as they fly from flower to flower – the honeybee colony is a wonderful model for a sustainable business!

What bee conservation projects do you support? Why do we need them?

We live on an increasingly fragile planet and it is our aim to do as much as we can to reverse the decline in bee numbers and the loss of biodiversity. Bees are responsible for pollinating 87 of the world’s leading food crops including most of our fruits and nuts – apples, pears, plums, cherries, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, avocados and almonds to name but a few. Even coffee, chocolate and cotton are bee pollinated.

We are proud to promote and support wildlife and biodiversity conservation work committing 5% of our profits to support a range of projects. We are currently working with the charity Bees For Development, who help protect areas of natural wilderness and ancient agriculture through sustainable beekeeping by placing an economic value on threatened land and giving local people the skills and knowledge to look after it. We also support Bridewell Organic Gardens as well as contributing to the work of Friends of the Earth.

What are your hopes for the bee population around the globe? What is the current situation like?

The problems bees are facing are not confined to pollinators – the dramatic change in land use in the last 60 years has taken a terrible toll on much of our wildlife. Most of our food system currently relies heavily on toxic agro-chemicals that accumulate in our soils and watercourses and many pesticides like those in the neonicitinoid group act on bees as neurotoxins. Habitat fragmentation also means that there is not enough connectivity between habitats anymore so many species struggle to move between areas for mating, foraging and dispersal.

What can each one of us do to help out the bees?

As consumers we can make an enormous difference by choosing to buy food produced on wildlife friendly farms where nature is encouraged. Organic farms support 50% more wildlife, with 30% more species; that’s more birds, butterflies, beetles, bats wildflowers and of course bees.

We can also plant bee friendly plants in the garden and leave some wild areas for habitat so that we can create an extensive patchwork of bee forage and provide bees and other pollinating insects with food and homes.

Like the bees, our aim should be to work with nature and leave the world more beautiful than we found it.

Do you have a favorite product? If so, what makes it so special?

All our products are amazing! I use the honey gel cleansers morning and night; they are made with lots of honey, so leave my skin feeling really clean but without stripping away all the natural oils. The toners are multi-tasking and are a great skin tonic when you’re on the go; I keep the Rose Otto Toner in my handbag and even spray it on my hair when it looks dry and fly away. Our honey moisturisers are made with pure concentrated goodness and work in natural harmony with all skin types; a tiny amount works wonders.
If I had to choose one product I couldn’t live without, it’s the Propolis + Ultra Radiance Cream. As someone who has mature and hyper-sensitive skin, it is my salvation and it has a wonderful honey smell. It is extremely rich and nourishing, so can also be used as a night treatment cream.

Editor’s note: Originally published in April 2017 and reposted in December 2018 for reformatting.