Founder Story

For most of my childhood, my tonsils ran my life. What finally worked was sitting on a shelf in an Italian pharmacy.

I could not tolerate antibiotics, which meant surgery was off the table too. Then, studying abroad, I had the worst flare-up of my life and walked into a pharmacy in Italy. What I walked out with was not a drug. It was a resin that bees make to keep their hive clean.

By Carly Stein Kremer Founder and CEO, Beekeeper's Naturals

Every few weeks, the same thing. My throat would close up, the fever would come, and I would lose days.

If you have had chronic tonsillitis, you know the routine. Most people get offered two ways out: antibiotics, or surgery to take the tonsils out. I could not have either one. My body did not tolerate antibiotics, and that ruled out the surgery too.

So I did the only thing left. I waited it out. Over and over, through most of my childhood and into college.

Then I got sick in Italy

I was studying abroad when I had the worst flare-up of my life. Flying home was not going to fix anything, and I had already run out of options at home anyway.

As a last resort, I went to a local pharmacy. What I found on the shelf was not a drug. It was a small bottle of something dark and sticky, made by bees, called propolis. I had never heard the word.

After barely a week of taking the bee product, my tonsils had almost returned to normal. Carly Stein Kremer, on discovering propolis

I had spent most of my life sick. It took about a week.

That is where the obsession started.

There is a pharmacy inside every beehive

Here is what took me years to fully appreciate.

A hive is warm, crowded and packed with sugar. On paper, it is exactly the place you would expect bacteria, mold and viruses to take over. They do not. And propolis is a large part of the reason why.

Bees collect resin from tree buds and plants, and they use it to line the walls of the hive and seal every crack. It keeps the germs out. We call propolis the bodyguard of the beehive, and that is not a phrase invented in a marketing meeting. It is the job the substance actually does.

Inside that resin are more than 300 beneficial compounds. Not a single isolated molecule engineered in a lab, but a whole defensive toolkit that bees have been refining far longer than we have been making medicine.

I came home and could not buy it anywhere

Back in New York I assumed propolis would be in every drugstore. It was not in any of them.

At the time I was studying biochemistry and working as a trader at Goldman Sachs. Neither of those qualifies you to make remedies. So I did the unglamorous version: I apprenticed with a local beekeeper, learned how to harvest propolis sustainably without hurting the colony, and made the first version of the throat spray in my kitchen.

I gave it to friends. I sold it at farmers markets with my own phone number on it, so people could tell me what they actually thought.

People were coming to me and sharing their experiences of how my products changed their lives. I knew this needed to exist. Carly Stein Kremer, on why she started the company

After several years on Wall Street, I left and made this the whole job.

Your medicine cabinet should be stocked with simple, clean, and powerful products you trust. And we are committed to making that happen. Carly Kremer, Founder

Not all propolis is worth putting in your mouth

This is the part most people never hear, and it is the reason I could not simply import someone else's bottle and be done.

Propolis behaves like a sponge. Whatever is in the environment around the hive ends up in the resin. Put a hive next to sprayed farmland and you get a beautiful, potent extract of exactly the chemicals you were trying to avoid.

So we source from remote apiaries located far from harmful chemicals, in Canada, Europe and South America. We work with our apiary partners to keep the sourcing sustainable, and we always put the health of the bees first. Every formula is third-party tested for pesticides and heavy metals.

What ended up in the bottle

The Propolis Immune Support Throat Spray is the product that started the company, and it is still the one I would hand you first.

Four ingredients. Bee propolis extract, vegetable glycerin, purified water and wildflower honey. That is the entire list. Our propolis delivers the highest concentration of polyphenols and flavonoids on the market.

Propolis Immune Support Throat Spray

★★★★★ 4.83 out of 5 from 5,151 reviews

• Propolis extract85 mg per serving
• Serving size4 sprays (0.5 mL)
• Servings per bottle60
• Size30 mL (1.06 fl oz)
• IngredientsPropolis, glycerin,
  water, wildflower honey

$13.99 100% money-back guarantee

Get the Propolis Throat Spray Free shipping on orders over $60

Spray in mouth 4 times for daily immune support. If symptoms are present, increase to 8 sprays.

What people actually say

These are verified-buyer reviews from the product page, reproduced as written.

Questions I get asked constantly

One bottle, in your bag, every day

I did not set out to build a company. I set out to not be sick every three weeks, and the only way to do that was to make the thing myself.

If your throat is the first thing to go every time you fly, every time the season turns, or every time work gets heavy, this is the bottle I would put in your bag.