Today we’d like to introduce you to Lexi Hughes.
Hi Lexi, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for sharing your story with us – to start, maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers.
Buzz In The Hills is a collaborative business my husband and I started in 2018, fresh out of college. Buzz was founded as an outlet for our passions, our love for beekeeping and the honeybee, and my fascination with working with the medicine the plants and honeybees have to offer to create alternative self care and wellness products. Over the years, my husband Cody has helped dozens of land owners establish and manage apiaries throughout the Texas hill country and black land prairie, and he continues to do so today on the side of his full-time work. Alongside this, I have built my natural products brand, making 100% beeswax candles and herbal self-care products out of my in-home studio and selling through craft markets, online, and now widely wholesale to local and national shops. I have embraced slow, steady, and organic growth with the brand. I took time to get to know my community and how I could best serve them through doing this work part-time over the years, and in 2023, I transitioned to dedicating myself full-time to creating quality natural products inspired by the honeybee and plant world. I consider myself a bridge for the medicine the honeybees and plants offer, alchemizing it into practical goods for folks to enjoy in their homes and their self-care and wellness practices.
Let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what challenges have you had to overcome?
I would be surprised to hear of any small business’ journey that was smooth and easy. One of the biggest challenges has been life/work balance. When you do what you love, it can be very easy for the line between the two to be blurred, especially when your work is in your home and you are working various part-time jobs to fund your business, as I did in the first 5 years of business. I am still finding balance in this, but each year, I master balance a bit further. This is incredibly challenging as a maker in the holiday season where even this year, as my time was fully dedicated to the business/ no longer had side jobs to balance, I still found myself working 60+ hour work weeks to keep up with the demand that the rush of the holiday / gifting season brings.
On the other hand, the summer typically brings meager sales, which brings a whole challenge. I am just now learning how to utilize that slower season for rest and a time for backend work like my website, dreaming up and testing new products, and planning for the year ahead. One thing that has helped me in these challenges is to look at my business as not a part of me but more so as a child or family member. Allowing it to grow at its own pace, flow through different seasons of its life (seasons of growth, abundance, or rest), and truly grow into whatever it wishes to be, and me just being a supportive presence/force in its life. This mindset has taken a lot of the pressure off and allowed me to create healthier boundaries to honor more time for personal life, and not be over consumed by work.
I appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I handcraft 100% beeswax candles, herbal skin care (balms, infused oils, face masks), and herbal wellness products (teas, elderberry syrup, elixirs). In the local Austin Community, I have, in a way, become the beeswax candle maker in the herbal / plant community, with my candles and other products available at some of my favorite local apothecaries like The Herb Bar and Earth Commons and various wellness and plant-focused shops in the greater Austin area.
Something that sets my work apart is my purist ways regarding my creative methods and sourcing of my ingredients. I am reflected back by many of my customers that my beeswax candles are some of the most fragrant and richest in color that they have ever found. I began making candles with beeswax from the bees I personally cared for and harvested from. As I have scaled up and had to outsource my wax, I have continued to carry the standards I had to begin with, for the beeswax to be obtained in a sustainable, bee-friendly method, and with the deep golden color and bold honey-like fragrance that only pure, quality beeswax carries.
I source my beeswax through a local beekeeping company that obtains their wax from a co-op where beekeepers throughout the US pool their beeswax ‘cappings’ for processing/ filtering into pure beeswax. Cappings are the thin layer of beeswax that is scraped off the top of the honeycomb and set aside when extracting the honey. Following the honey extraction, the remaining frame of the beeswax comb is returned to the hive for the honeybees to use. This is a very sustainable and bee-friendly method. With honey and beeswax, when importing from other countries, there is often a lot of funny business around the purity of the product; frequently, the product is cut/ blended with cheaper inputs. For this reason, along with the desire to supporting local economy, sourcing US beeswax is a priority for me.
I always source the herbs and other ingredients in my products with a standard for organic, high quality, and as local as possible. From the beginning, my herbal products have been directly inspired by the plants I grow in my garden and a select few that I wild harvest with great care. Many of the herbs I use in my products are still today grown and harvested from my own gardens. When outsourcing my herbs, I search high and low for organic herbs grown by small US farmers. I happily pay the premium on them as they offer superior quality and freshness that translates to a more fragrant and medicinally potent end product. This makes for an exceptional finished product and supports organic farmers doing good work to nourish the lands and ecosystems.
I am also a purist in the ways which I prefer more traditional, simple methods in my crafting. Most notably, I use the hand-dipped method for making my beeswax taper candles. This is the original method of candle crafting and has been in practice for thousands of years. This dipped vs. molded method makes for a better, longer-burning candle with less dripping. You can also feel the love and intention that goes into them. Each candle is dipped 30+ times to achieve the end product, and it is a very meditative process that demands my full attention. Though, of course I love my industrial wax melter, my decorative silicone molds and my Vitamix for various herb crafting; these tools make my work much more energetically feasible, but I love working in more traditional ways when possible. It feels like a common thread connecting myself and my work to the old ways and our collective ancestry.
We love surprises, fun facts, and unexpected stories. Please share something that might surprise us.
Many people who know me through my work as a creator of natural home and body products, herbalist, beekeeper, and organic gardener may be surprised to find that I was led here from a lack of connection with the natural world and an adolescence of depression and addiction. I was raised in the flat and plant-deprived desert basin in west TX- not the pretty canyons you may think of when you think of west Texas, but flat, dry, dusty land that is populated with only a few small mesquite trees that are more like bushes, actual tumbleweeds and an abundance of oil pump jacks. From age 13 to 18, I struggled to find happiness and fulfillment. I struggled for years trying to find my place and meaning in life in all the wrong places and through substances that never gave me lasting joy. Nature saved my life. When I moved to the hill country for college, towards a call to the trees and rivers this area holds. Through hiking trails, swimming in the natural waters, and napping under ancient trees, I found myself and a deeper meaning in life that I had been desperately searching. This work is dedicated to that in a lot of ways. I pray that my work in this world can help others tap into and know their connection and belonging to the natural world around them. This world would be a better place if we could all tune into our relationship the natural world around us, that we ourselves are a part of. Mother Earth has so much to offer us if we offer her a bit of respect.
Contact Info:
- Website: Buzzinthehills.com
- Instagram: @buzzinthehills
- Facebook: /buzzinthehills
Image Credits
Jenna Clark, Olivia Haun
