Les recherches populaires
Since ancient times, humans have amongst bees, as they inhabited trees, rocks, gardens, and houses. In rural areas, every family traditionally owned beehives, and this is still the case in many villages around the world. The buzzing of bees is deeply relaxing, and by simply listening to it, it brings a vibrant information to our body and mind, comparable to the "A" note of a tuning fork, beautiful music, or the "Om" sound of meditation. This latent serenity is the secret power of all our Apicosmetic preparations
Apicosmetics® is a new approach to hygiene and its relationship with beauty, based on the intelligence and wisdom of bees. It was created by Catherine Flurin in 1977. Like all Ballot-Flurin preparations, Apicosmetic® preparations are made with consciousness, in continual respect for the rhythms of both bees and plants. Active dynamization methods, reliant on the hands of humans, ensures the integrality of natural energies and ingredients in our preparations .
Everything began in 1976 when a young student, fascinated by the life of bees, decided to become a beekeeper... Catherine Flurin became a whisperer for her bees, intuitively connecting to them to better understand their way of life...
In conventional beekeeping training, she discovered the basics of this fascinating profession, but the material taught was an exploitive approach centered around production, with intensive, sometimes brutal, breeding methods, the use of antibiotics, and contaminating pesticides. Catherine, rightfully horrified, was motivated to act differently and so developed a method of GENTLE Beekeeping® based on respecting the bees and their natural rhythms. A new world opened up to her: the intersectional world of bees and people, millions of years old, where information is passed between these two close co-inhabitants of our planet.
At the age of 25, Catherine installed her first beehives with her partner, Philippe Ballot, also a beekeeper, and together they had three children. The young couple bought a small and dilapidated house in the foothills of the French Pyrenees. The Ballot-Flurin apiary was officially created in 1982 with a grand ambition: to respect the bees as a true ancient co-inhabitants dating back 100 million years, to understand their secret language, and to actively collaborate with the beehive so that it gives its best without exploitation: honey, propolis, and royal jelly of the highest quality. Conscious of concrete actions, they were among the first to advocate for a more bee-friendly organic beekeeping practice, without chemical inputs.
The apiary grew alongside a loyal clientele who were environmentally conscious. Catherine Ballot-Flurin drafted specifications to explain how she produced honey but also how she considered the bees. This document inspired the Nature & Progrès association, which created the first organic label specifications for beekeeping. It was only natural that Ballot-Flurin products were the first to gain this certification.
The Pyrenean Healing Balm inaugurated the first Apitherapeutic line in 1992. This was followed by propolis extracts, throat lozenges, honey soaps, and shampoos. Catherine was also able to advance the recognition of propolis as a food product, obtaining Organic Agriculture certifications that were previously inaccessible to bee products. The Ballot-Flurin line of preparations continued to expand, with the Apicosmetics® line and its famous Beekeeper's Creams.