Honeybee soap

Soapmaking Forum

Help Support Soapmaking Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Soapstars

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jun 8, 2017
Messages
152
Reaction score
94
Hello Soapers. I have a recipe for a soap with honey and beeswax as follows:

40% olive oil
25% shea butter
25% coconut oil
10% castor oil

To this 900g batch I add:

13g Sea salt
9g Natural honey
9g Beeswax
9g Kaolin clay

But the soap doesn't look like theres any yellow beeswax or honey in it and has no natural scent. I wasn't planning to use any EO or FO in this soap but it should look a bit better and smell of something surely!

What improvements would you make? Pic below. Thanks for any help.

DSC05608.jpg
 
Weird! Whenever I add honey, there's always a sweet scent and a tan sort of color. I don't know off the top of my head how much I usually add. It's not my favorite, so I don't do it often.
Edit: why is your beeswax in with your additives? Did you not put it into the calculator with the oils etc?
 
Weird! Whenever I add honey, there's always a sweet scent and a tan sort of color. I don't know off the top of my head how much I usually add. It's not my favorite, so I don't do it often.
Edit: why is your beeswax in with your additives? Did you not put it into the calculator with the oils etc?

Hi Artemis, thank you for your reply.
I have a basic recipe for 8 soaps which has been safety assessed and so everything that is unique to a particular soap is an "additive" but yes I do add it to the oils that require melting but I don't weigh it as part of the oils. is that what is going wrong do you think? It does have a bit less lather too even though it has the honey.
 
Beeswax does reduce lather and since it saponifies, it needs to be included with the oils, not used as a additive.

I like a little beeswax in soap, 3-5% is all you need. If you want a darker soap, use dark raw wax.

Personally, I don't really notice a scent with my honey and wax soap. It might smell a little sweet for a few days but by the time it's cured, any scent is gone.

I think your soap looks great, I like the color.
 

Thanks Obsidian, it's my worst seller so I will try maybe a little more honey and adding the beeswax to the oils as suggested.
 
Hi Artemis, thank you for your reply.
I have a basic recipe for 8 soaps which has been safety assessed and so everything that is unique to a particular soap is an "additive" but yes I do add it to the oils that require melting but I don't weigh it as part of the oils. is that what is going wrong do you think? It does have a bit less lather too even though it has the honey.
No, I was just surprised it wasn't being calculated in the lye calculator along with the oils etc. I have never had the beeswax affect my soap color. However, I have only ever used the refined beeswax; not much color there, to begin with.
 
Your soap looks lovely. Does your assessment not allow you to add some ingredients to your base to be saponified, I thought that when I had an assessment before all the new regs came in that was what I had, a base formula with the option to add a certain percent of other stuff like bees or a luxury oil or whatever, additives where a different thing and came in with EOs /FOs SL. etc. Could be different now though.
 
After looking at your recipe again, I'm not surprised it doesn't lather well with the combo of high shea and wax. Do you have a recipe with less shea butter in it you can use instead? If not, reduce your shea by 3% and replace it with the wax.

Still might not be what you are after but its something to try. In all honestly, many people aren't fond of wax in soap as it can leave a odd feeling on the skin. Personally I like it but only sometimes.
 
Beautiful soap.

Most scents won't survive the lye unless it's specifically formulated to (like an EO or FO). If you want a honey scent you'll have to find a FO- there are a ton of good ones out there. I'm not in the U.K. but my favorite right now is Brambleberry's Pure Honey, if you can find it.
 
I agree with Obsidian, trouble is here in the UK where we have to have a safety assessment to sell and which does not usually allow us to change the recipe unless it is like the one I mentioned in my previous post where you are able to tweak it, but not all assessments are the same and some are just one recipe which has to be adhered to as far as I am aware. Love the sound of the Brambleberry pure honey, sadly I don't know of any suppler selling Brambleberry FOs here in the UK most of our honey scents have to me the aroma of candy floss, not sure if you call the fairground spun kiddies pink sugar that in the US but it is a particular sweet smell not the lovely beeswaxy aroma which I adore, the nearest to me is Gracfruits Scottish blossom honey which is strong and more real to me.
 
Your soap looks lovely. Does your assessment not allow you to add some ingredients to your base to be saponified, I thought that when I had an assessment before all the new regs came in that was what I had, a base formula with the option to add a certain percent of other stuff like bees or a luxury oil or whatever, additives where a different thing and came in with EOs /FOs SL. etc. Could be different now though.

My assessment is very specific and only allows the ingredients and exact amounts that I put forward as one recipe with 8 variations. I can't imagine getting into any other putting a bit less of something in but not more I suppose.
This is the EU safety assessment which may be different?

I agree with Obsidian, trouble is here in the UK where we have to have a safety assessment to sell and which does not usually allow us to change the recipe unless it is like the one I mentioned in my previous post where you are able to tweak it, but not all assessments are the same and some are just one recipe which has to be adhered to as far as I am aware. Love the sound of the Brambleberry pure honey, sadly I don't know of any suppler selling Brambleberry FOs here in the UK most of our honey scents have to me the aroma of candy floss, not sure if you call the fairground spun kiddies pink sugar that in the US but it is a particular sweet smell not the lovely beeswaxy aroma which I adore, the nearest to me is Gracfruits Scottish blossom honey which is strong and more real to me.

Yeah, a honey fragrance sounds nice but I am trying to keep some of my soaps fragrance and additive free apart from natural ingredients.
 
So Soapstars what constiutes the variants? is it made clear on your SA that it is only additives and the base formula E.G. oils must stay the same?

In my 17 years of soaping soaps only smell of soap without any EO/FO sadly, Goats milk tends to give an aroma of sorts, I would not say it smelled of anything in particular but when I have made fresh milk the old way putting the lye into the milk yes it smelled like you know what to begin with but ended up with a sort of faint smell of caramel, ish, that is the only way I can describe it, you could maybe enhance that with pure natural Vanilla infusion perhaps but it would be very faint if anything.....if you are lucky that is, worth a little experiment though.

The bees wax added as as sort of superfat additive would in my mind kill the lather somewhat especially when you add in the high % of Shea, so not sure of the benefits there, I must say I quite like bees wax in soap when saponified, to me it adds a little creaminess.
 
So Soapstars what constiutes the variants? is it made clear on your SA that it is only additives and the base formula E.G. oils must stay the same?

Well yes, it is the base oils in the basic recipe and then the variants are colour and fragrance or no colour and no fragrance. I thought the honey would increase the lather, hence beeswax with honey and it would be better to include the beeswax in the weight of the oils I have learnt now. Will try that anyway.

Thank you all for your comments. I will let you know how it goes.
 
For what it's worth, in looking at your recipe on SoapCalc, your beeswax amount and your honey amount each stand as being 1% as per the amount of your oils. For myself, I use 5% honey and 3% beeswax respectively as per my amount of oils in my honey & beeswax soap. The 5% honey ppo really kicks up the bubbly factor.


IrishLass :)
 
For what it's worth, in looking at your recipe on SoapCalc, your beeswax amount and your honey amount each stand as being 1% as per the amount of your oils. For myself, I use 5% honey and 3% beeswax respectively as per my amount of oils in my honey & beeswax soap. The 5% honey ppo really kicks up the bubbly factor.


IrishLass :)
I didn't even look at the numbers very hard (MATH!). Increasing the honey may also give you the color you're looking for.
 
For what it's worth, in looking at your recipe on SoapCalc, your beeswax amount and your honey amount each stand as being 1% as per the amount of your oils. For myself, I use 5% honey and 3% beeswax respectively as per my amount of oils in my honey & beeswax soap. The 5% honey ppo really kicks up the bubbly factor.


IrishLass :)

Thank you I will try that, was concerned in case the honey volcanoed out of the soap like it did once before when I used too much!
 

Latest posts

Back
Top