Healthy swimmers’ skin with Neve’s Bees

We meet the founders of Neve’s Bees, a natural and eco-friendly skincare brand that harnesses the healing powers of beeswax for healthy, hydrated skin

Tell us a bit about your swim background

I’ve always loved open water swimming. I learned to swim as a baby in the sea in Jersey where my granny lived and have been a fish ever since. Rather embarrassingly, my son’s GCSE spoken Spanish exam was a recitation of how his mother had taken off all her clothes to swim in the sea whilst at a New Year’s Eve party on a beach! When we moved to Oxfordshire, sea swimming was rather challenging, but we soon met a lovely community who swim in local lakes and rivers – and frequently make trips further afield.

How does swimming enhance your life?

Before becoming part of the Oxfordshire swimming community, I’d always considered cold water swimming rather an odd thing to do but the joy and excitement of plunging into icy water with friends is the biggest buzz and brings an enormous sense of camaraderie. I find it truly liberating to be faced with a challenge that you initially perceive as simply impossible – “There’s no way I’m getting in that lake, it’s covered in ice!” – but then you find you can do. It’s super motivating and inspiring. We recently competed in the UK Cold Swimming Championships in Tooting Bec Lido – what a fabulous and memorable day.

Where did the inspiration come from for Neve’s Bees?

Neve is my daughter who decided we should keep bees, and her granddad Jim bought her first hive for her 10th birthday. We both suffered from dry skin and eczema and couldn’t find products that weren’t filled with chemicals that made our skin worse. I have a background as a chemist and a lifelong interest in natural medicine, so it wasn’t much of a leap to start using our beeswax to create our own moisturisers, cleansers and serums. Initially we made them just for ourselves and for friends and family, and it’s all grown from there.

What makes Neve’s Bees useful and unique?

We are fiercely against ultra-processed ingredients in skincare – better for our skin, and better for our environment. To summarise the science part, pretty much all high street face creams, body lotions and hand creams are mainly water (aqua). This water is added to make the products cheaper. And adding water means you need to add chemical preservatives, emulsifiers, thickeners and pesticides, too, ingredients that can not only harm your skin and its microbiome, but are washed into our lakes, rivers and seas.

Our products are made without water and ultra processed chemicals, just pure 100% natural plant oils, botanicals and Oxfordshire beeswax. They’re ingredients that keep your skin naturally healthy and protected, feeling soft and supple, and also reduce pollution in our waterways. Our concentrated formulas use less packaging and less carbon in shipping, and are a perfect fit for your swim bag, too! No more sore dry faces, flaky lips, cracked heels or sore hands from the cold water.

Neve’s Bees range now includes lip balms, moisturising hand salves, nourishing face cleansers, moisturisers and serum, foot balm and new natural deodorants. All our products are made in our workshop in West Oxfordshire. We also donate 10% of our profits to wildflower restoration projects to bring back the UK’s bees and other pollinators

Where can people buy/connect with you?

Neve’s Bees are available from our website, from the Outdoor Swimmer Shop, and from many outdoor shops and garden centres.