Mary Hobbs

Background

Before BeeHive, Mary was a jet mechanic in the US Air Force, stationed in Northern Utah. BeeHive Body Co. started there in 2014 as a single batch of goat milk soap made in a kitchen that wasn't built for it — an attempt to find something that actually got the grease off after a long day on the flightline, without the petroleum byproducts and synthetic lathering agents in most commercial soap. There was no business plan behind that first batch. There just wasn't a good enough reason to stop making it.

In 2017, the business moved with her from Utah to New Castle, Indiana, and in 2024 it grew into a dedicated studio space at 1335 Broad St — the same space where every product is still made by hand today. Twelve years and thousands of customers later, the formulation logic hasn't changed: if she doesn't understand what an ingredient does, it doesn't go in the bar. For the full founding story, read Our Story.

Hands-On, Not Hands-Off

Mary isn't a credentialed cosmetic chemist, and this page won't pretend otherwise — her background is self-taught, built over twelve years of actually making the product, batch after batch, and paying attention to what happened when a formula changed. That's a different kind of expertise than a lab credential, and it's the one this site is built on: every ingredient claim on this blog comes from something she's formulated, tested, or sourced directly, not from a supplier's marketing copy.

That includes the sourcing relationships — she works directly with the Wagyu farm in Lafayette, Indiana that supplies BeeHive's tallow — and the teaching: she runs every soap-making and bath-bomb class in the New Castle studio herself. If you want to learn the process firsthand rather than read about it, the class schedule is here.

Articles by Mary

Every post on the BeeHive journal is written by Mary, drawn from direct formulation and sourcing experience rather than secondhand research.