About Us

Hi, I am Adriana Compagnoni, the beekeeper from South Mountain Bees. 

We make bath and body products with honey and beeswax from our backyard bees and delectable single origin honey.

Before I dive into our story, our values and our mission, I want to address the pressing times we are living, and the difficult times ahead. Supporting the Elizabeth Coalition to House the Homeless and health workers at Saint Michael's Medical Center has helped us keep our focus on those in need in our community. They will be the beneficiary of our giving campaigns during the Holidays shopping season.

Facts:

• We've been keeping bees since 2012.
• I am also an enthusiastic organic gardener. I’m obsessed with avoiding pesticides, herbicides, and any other -cides at all costs. I painstakingly pick up slugs by hand (with gloves, ew!) when they come out by the hundreds after 11PM in the summer.
• In April 2012, we got our first bees, and our backyard beekeeping family adventure began.
• February 2015, we opened our online store.

Awards:

• Best in Cosmetics Division at the New Jersey Honey Show for four consecutive years: 2016-2019
• Best in Honey Division in New Jersey Honey Show 2020
• Best in Show. New Jersey Honey Show 2020

For a complete list of awards click here.

In The News:

Our beekeeping activities got us featured in the news and on the radio from The New York Times to WNYC. Check it out!

Keeping bees keeps us honest

To the best of our ability we use ingredients that do not hurt the bees. Our products are carefully crafted in small batches using honey and beeswax. We spend countless hours caring for our hip suburban honeybees, which live a healthy life sheltered from the harmful chemicals of traditional commercial farming, foraging freely in the South Mountain Reservation, and in our neighbors’ yards. Having the bees has brought change to the neighborhood, not only you can see more flowers, but many neighbors have told me how they changed the way they care for their lawn, and how they started planting pollinator friendly plants for our bees.

With every bar of soap, tin of lip balm, or jar of honey that you purchase, you are joining us in helping save the honeybee. In return, the bees will reward you with the amazing products they help us create, provide free pollination services to the neighborhood gardeners, and help produce wild fruits and berries for the local wildlife.

Join us in our mission to help create a world where we can meet our needs and even our wants without hurting our environment.

More behind our story & how we came to be

As you may have heard, by 2011 the number of honeybee colonies in the US had been sharply declining for over two decades, and colony collapse disorder had become a household name. There are so many factors that it’s somehow nobody’s fault. It’s a case of death by a thousand cuts. Recent studies have shown that commercial farming and gardening practices are reducing pollinators numbers at staggering speed.

The summer of 2011 we visited friends in the Nebbiolo region of Piedmont, Italy. It was a sunny afternoon; they had two hives of buzzing honeybees, and we sat in the shade of centenary chestnut trees to savor acacia and chestnut honey that they had harvested that year. I was ready to retire! What else could anybody want? That was a pivotal moment. We then said, this is it! We are going to do our part. 

We decided to transition our garden into a pollinator haven and found out how to keep bees. The rewards were bound to be sweet! We landscaped our yard using as many natives as possible, and we continued growing our vegetables using organic practices.I joined the Essex County Beekeepers Society (ECBS), my local chapter of the New Jersey Beekeepers Association (NJBA), and I took their beginners beekeeping course.

In April 2012, we got our first bees, and our backyard beekeeping family adventure began. We started with two hives and a lot of enthusiasm. We were busy, but we felt it was important to dedicate time and resources to care for the bees. We started to wonder what we were going to do with the beeswax that was accumulating in our freezer after each honey harvest. I looked into a local artist that was doing encaustic painting, but then I found a recipe of furniture polish using beeswax, that ended up being my first butcher block’s paste. That gave me the idea of eliminating as many pesticides as possible from our daily life. The ideal candidate was soap. The kids were old enough to have lye in the house, and we all use soap many times a day, so that single product will make a big difference in our chemical footprint. Next, came lip balm. I don’t know if there are any studies of how much lip balm we end up eating, but if any, we want it to have no chemicals in it.

In February 2015, we opened our online store. With every bar of soap, tin of lip balm, or jar of honey that you purchase, you are joining us in helping save the honeybee. In return, the bees will reward you with the amazing products they help us create, provide free pollination services to the neighborhood gardeners, and help produce wild fruits and berries for the local wildlife.

Since 2015 we've been submitting entries to the New Jersey Honey Show. It is a lot of fun, and you get a report with feedback from the judges to improve the products we offer you, and ribbons to show your friends and family when you win. Who doesn't like to win? A little known fact is that  besides the bragging rights that comes with every award, participating in the show has other repercussions. The Honey Show winning entries are displayed in the State House bringing awareness to our legislators to support beekeeping in the State of New Jersey.