Our story
BeeHive Body Co. is a handmade soap and skincare studio in New Castle, Indiana. It started in 2014 in the mountains of Northern Utah while Mary was a jet mechanic with the US Air Force — a single batch of goat milk soap and no plan for what came next. Utah is also where the BeeHive name came from; Utah is the BeeHive state. In 2017, BeeHive crossed the Rockies and landed back “home again” in Indiana. Twelve years and 8,400 customers later, we're still in that same spirit — small batches, honest ingredients, made by hand.
Why we started
We got tired of reading ingredient lists that looked like chemistry homework and didn't work to get the grease off after a long day on the flightline. Most commercial soap isn't soap — it's a detergent bar made from petroleum byproducts and synthetic lathering agents. The labels were long. The results weren't. We wanted something cleaner. So we started making our own.
That first batch was goat milk soap. Goat milk has a pH close to human skin, and the lactic acid acts as a gentle exfoliant — it's not marketing, it's chemistry. Once we understood why it worked, we couldn't go back to the alternative. Everything since has been built on that same logic: if we don't understand what an ingredient does, it doesn't go in the bar.
How we make it
Cold-process, six-week cure
Every bar is cold-process, which means we mix lye and oils at controlled temperatures, pour into molds, and wait. Real cold-process soap cures for six weeks before it ships. During that cure, water evaporates out of the bar and the saponification process completes fully. What you get is a harder bar, a richer and creamier lather, and soap that lasts two to three times longer in the shower than a commercial detergent bar. We don't rush it.
Where the ingredients come from
The tallow comes from grass-fed, grass-finished cattle sourced from farms we know — including Wagyu beef tallow from a farm in Lafayette, Indiana. Grass-fed fat has a meaningfully different fatty acid profile than grain-fed: more conjugated linoleic acid, more fat-soluble vitamins, a lighter color and cleaner smell. We use it in our soap and in our whipped tallow balm for the same reason.
The goat milk is fresh. Every fragrance is a high-quality custom blend — we don't do “cucumber melon from a bottle.” If a scent doesn't hold through a six-week cure, we don't use it. If we can't pronounce an ingredient, we don't put it in the bar.
The studio
In 2024, we opened our New Castle location at 1335 Broad Street, which gave us the studio. It's the same space where we make everything — the soap molds are on the same shelves as the workshop supplies. We like it that way. There's nothing hidden.
The workshops are hands-on: you leave with something you made. We run soap-making, bath-bomb, sugar scrub, lotion, and wax melt classes for all skill levels — everything is provided, nothing is assumed. If you've never touched lye, that's fine. If you have, there's still something to learn. Come visit — the tour is free, and we're open Tuesday through Saturday.