Lotion Explosion

[Compostkat]

i was excited to make this lotion using all parts of the hive: honey, propolis, royal jelly, beeswax and pollen as all of these ingredients are powerful on their own. I used a recipe taking into consideration temps to preserve the nutrients in honey and royal jelly and cool enough for .3% preservative at the end. I multiplied the recipe and bottled when cool. I was SO PROUD! 2 days later, the lotion started sleeping out of the bottles. When I opened them, they popped as if they were fermenting. Although there’s no smell and the lotion is gorgeous, smooth, light and creamy. I need help and am hoping I don’t have to rid of this entire batch.

 

[Dahila]

honey , propolis and royal jelly all are bugs food. Very difficult to preserve. Lotion is not good (that's my opinion) something is growing there. With that ing you need to use full power of preservative and add another one

 

[Compostkat]

honey , propolis and royal jelly all are bugs food. Very difficult to preserve. Lotion is not good (that's my opinion) something is growing there. With that ing you need to use full power of preservative and add another one

Shall I add another broad spectrum preservative? Can I add more Liquid Germall Plus since I didn’t use full .5%?

 

[DeeAnna]

If you left milk out on the counter for a few days and it started to get smelly and chunky, would you wonder if you could drink it? Would you ask if there was something you could add to the milk to make it safe to drink again? Apply that analogy to your lotion.

Bluntly put, you have no idea what's growing in that mess. No amount of preservative is going to fix the problem. The lotion needs to be discarded, just like you'd discard sour milk.

You cannot load up a lotion with all kinds of food ingredients -- the honey and all that stuff -- and expect a preservative to prevent microbes from growing in lotion. Cosmetic chemists would be cautioning you to use a fraction of 1% of these ingredients in total to reduce the very real risk of explosive microbial growth.

A preservative has to be combined with sanitary manufacturing practices, packaging that reduces contamination by the user, an effective broad spectrum preservative, and only tiny amounts of any ingredient that can be used as a food source by microbes. You cannot take one of these factors away and expect the lotion to remain sanitary.

 

[Dahila]

DeeAnna as always beautifully worded, I use hydrolyzed honey in lotion, Honeyquat, this is especially made for using in lotion. I am with DeeAnna on that discard it, In many years I make lotions I do have fail from time to time, but I know it immediately that something is wrong. You can use your bees products in soaps with no problem

 

[MGM]

I agree in principle, although I also eat /drink a lot of fermented food , not all of them intentionally so...