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Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Animals Burt Talks to the Bees

Posted by Gillian Anderson on Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 3:05 PM

Check out these terrific/informative videos from Burt's Bees, where founder Burt Shavitz talks to a queen bee, a drone bee, and some worker bees (all played by Isabella Rossellini). Full of interesting bee facts and cool bee costumes!

Elle magazine has an article about Burt Shavitz and the beauty industry's new interest in bee products:

Shavitz was a trailblazer, not only in his pre-artisanal-Brooklyn-era decision to ditch his media job and live off the land, but also in his instinctual understanding of the value of bees, both for his own and the greater good. Shavitz has been a sort of custodian and de facto publicist for the species. The company has worked tirelessly to call attention to Colony Collapse Disorder, creating the Honeybee Health Improvement Project to fund research grants, taking a stand against pesticide use, and giving every employee a stipend to take beekeeping classes.

Things you can do to help bees:
Plant wildflowers
Buy local honey
Support organic farms.

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Comments (10) RSS

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Regardless of who now owns Burt's Bees, that was a very cute and mostly accurate video about bees.

It's warm hear today and my bees are out flying (they don't want to poop in the hive). I've put out some beeswax sticky with honey for them to clean off and enjoy.

Another thing people can do to help bees - don't call an exterminator when you see a swarm or see bees in your soffit vents. Contact your local bee keeping society. Bee keepers will collect the bees and rehome them in hives.

Posted by swing state voter on January 24, 2013 at 11:49 AM

Love the pollen collecting reenactment!

Posted by Bea on January 23, 2013 at 8:57 PM

Isabella Rossellini in a bee costume talking about bee life? OBVIOUSLY AWESOME!

Posted by bsweek on January 23, 2013 at 8:40 PM

Yep at #1. Big giant companies buy the successful small brands. You know it had gone to hell when Burt's Bees products started showing up in places like Target.

Way back, Burts Bees had a combination of products that worked really well. But corporate can't stand stagnant and so they fucked it up completely by all their stinky fragrance bull shit products like fucking "pomegranate" and whatnot. fuckers

Posted by lauramae on January 23, 2013 at 8:36 PM

Like pretty much all cosmetic products, Burt's also contains the catch-all "fragrance." Because fragrances are considered proprietary secrets, their components do not have to be listed. They also frequently contain compounds (phthalates, formaldehyde), which are known toxins and carcinogens, and otherwise banned in food products by the FDA.

Posted by zivilisierter Wurm

on January 23, 2013 at 3:59 PM

Re: 3,

http://www.sundancechannel.com/greenporn…

http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digit…

(or google "isabella rossellini seduce me").

Posted by rob!

on January 23, 2013 at 3:38 PM

Good point @1. One in a line of formerly small environmentally sensitive companies (Whole Foods never being one of those): Clorox paid close to $1 billion, L’Oréal paid $1.4 billion for the Body Shop, and Colgate-Palmolive bought 84% of Tom’s of Maine for $100 million. In the case of Burt's, the queen bee (Roxanne Quimby, 33 single mom) made off with $300m (after a falling out?), and Burt (who maybe should have been using the big head) ended up with a couple million .

Posted by biffp on January 23, 2013 at 3:29 PM

Burt might not own the company yet I must say, Isabella remains one of the cutest, sexiest babes ever. She is so awesome and this proves it!!

Posted by snacktruck on January 23, 2013 at 3:26 PM

Also, bee blocks to encourage native, solitary-nesting orchard bees (replace the fifth orphan link with this site-search link).

Posted by rob!

on January 23, 2013 at 3:24 PM

Burt's Bees is owned by the Clorox Corporation, and Shavitz hasn't had a stake in the company since selling out to his partner in 1997. I guess he's still good for publicity, though.

Posted by Fnarf